Custom-built carbon nanotubes can enter human cells as harmless drug-delivery vehicles, speculates a Franco-Italian team of biologists and materials chemists.

Alberto Bianco, Maurizio Prato and their colleagues in Strasbourg and Trieste have shown for the first time that water soluble carbon nanotubes with fluorescent probes and peptide molecules bound to their surfaces can cross the cell membrane at a range of different temperatures. By using a peptide with proven therapeutic activity, they have demonstrated that these 'nanovehicles' could transport drugs directly into a cell and, potentially, even into the cell nucleus.

'A critical issue is to prove the functionality and efficacy of the active molecules delivered using carbon nanotubes,' note the authors.

'We foresee important applications of this work in the field of drug and vaccine delivery.'

Caroline Evans