By Dexter Johnson

Each nanoparticle is composed of an iron oxide core (red squares) that is swathed in albumin (grey) and the anti-clotting agent tPA (green). The iron oxide cubes are about 20 nm on a side.

Magnetic nanoparticles have served as the foundation for a number of medical technologies, including drug delivery, medical imaging contrast agents and cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Now researchers at Houston Methodist are loading up magnetic nanoparticles with drugs and camouflaging them from the immune systems so that they can  destroy blood clots at a rate about 100 to 1000 times faster than a commonly used clot-busting technique.  …[Read more]