Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, and diabetes are among the most difficult medical conditions to treat because key cells within the body stop working. Drugs relieve the symptoms of these conditions but do not restore key cells to health.

To jumpstart cell regeneration, researchers are combining biology and nanotechnology to form innovative scaffolding that transports molecular signals or DNA directly to failing cells. The scaffold is an artificial, three-dimensional matrix that is transient and compatible with the environment surrounding cells. As long as it ?lives? in the body, the scaffold provides signals that alter cellular behavior, says Dr. Samuel I. Stupp, director of the Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine at Northwestern University's Chicago campus.

Read the complete article here.

[back]