Several potentially transformative treatments for cancer and HIV face a common obstacle—getting drugs into cells, which are designed to reject foreign materials.
A new microfluidic device, recently developed by a startup called SQZ Biotech, can get microscopic material into cells quickly and cheaply by vigorously squeezing those cells, temporarily making their membranes permeable.
When it comes to building microscopic devices, one of the most promising ideas is to exploit the process of self-assembly. In this way, complex structures can be created by combining building blocks under natural circumstances.
This kind of self-assembly mechanism dominates at the molecular scale, where it is responsible for the construction of most biomolecules. At the heart of this mechanism is Brownian motion which effectively mixes and jiggles molecules so that they rapidly find their place in incipient structures. This is a powerful process that can form hugely complex machines such as the ribosome, a molecular device for synthesizing proteins.
