Image of the Day: The Art of Medicine Delivery

This image might strike some as more artful that a lot of what hangs in galleries. But it's actually serious medicine.

Scientists crafted these microscopic, hollow capsules out of lipids, which are water-repellant molecules in the same family as fats and oils. They collapse when cooled below body temperature. The collapse squeezes out whatever chemicals are inside the miniscule ball in a controlled manner that could one day deliver drugs to the human body or improve cosmetics, the researchers say.

But first they have to figure out how to cool the tiny pills without killing surrounding body tissue.

The work was led by Sahraoui Chaieb and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and detailed last month in the journal Physical Review Letters.

--LiveScience Staff

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Credit:  Sahraoui Chaieb, Univerity of Illinois at Urbana Champaign