Media Coverage for Super-sized Nanocages

Work from the Nitschke Group generating super-sized nanocages which could be applied to drug delivery has received widespread media attention. The work supervised by Prof. Jonathan Nitschke, and led by Dr Kai Wu, was recently published in Nature Synthesis (requires a subscription) and reports the use of a new pentagonal subcomponent to construct progressively larger metal-organic cages. The hope is that the large interior cavity created in the formation of these architectures would allow encapsulation and subsequent delivery of drug molecules, with the largest cages suitably sized for the encapsulation of large biomolecules.

Authors Jonathan Nitschke and Kai Wu were interviewed on their results by The Medicine Maker, a blog covering research relevant to the pharmaceutical industry. Dr Kai Wu said of the work, "For many years, we have attempted to create fivefold linking subcomponents based on different backbones for the construction of large capsules using subcomponent self-assembly. These attempts were unsuccessful, either due to the difficulties in subcomponent synthesis or the formation of entropically favored smaller assemblies (for example, sandwich structures). However, with perseverance and additional expertise, we were finally able to tackle this very challenging issue." The full interview can be read at The Medicine Maker.