Original broadcast date: March 8, 2009

Through much of medical history, the approach to treating disease has been akin to using a blunt instrument to carpet bomb an area. The side effects that many treatments create is testament to the fact more than the region of the body we wish to target is being affected. This is not to lessen the impact of how modern medicine has helped millions of people and reduced suffering but also illustrates how certain refinements in our approach can lessen the negative impacts.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University created nanoscale biological approach to improve how we target diseased areas of the body. These nano-sized submarine carriers which operate like a GPS system to locate and target cells can deliver material, for example, to specific cancer cells and destroy them with harming the surrounding healthy cells. Their research was published in the journal Science.

• Dr. Dan Peer, Ph.D. Senior lecturer and Head of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine in the Department of Cell Research & Immunology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at Tel Aviv University