Tiny Factories to Produce Medicine Within the Body

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts, USA) report an advance toward treating disease with minute capsules containing not drugs — but the DNA and other biological machinery for making the drug. Daniel G. Anderson and colleagues have devised micro- and nano-sized capsules that contain the genetically coded instructions, plus the read-out gear and assembly line for protein synthesis that can be switched on with an external signal. The resulting nanoparticles produced active proteins on demand when the researchers shined a laser light on them,  being turned on when needed to produce medicines that cannot be taken orally or are toxic and would harm other parts of the body.