Engineering Targeted Nanoparticles

The Koch Institute at MIT has chosen one of Jason Chang’s images as an Image Award recipient for 2018. In this video, Chang explains what his work entails.

He is aiming to engineer nanoparticles that can be used to manipulate various activities in cells. These nanoparticles might be especially useful, for example, in fighting viruses by stimulating the natural defenses in our immune system to react faster to a pathogen and battle it more effectively.

In the image, the bright orange spots are cells, which are interacting with the nanoparticles; those are seen in blue. It’s important for the researchers to be able to visualize exactly where the particles are ending up, to ensure they have the intended impact on the proper cell type.