Drugs and vaccines could one day make their way into your body at the speed of light. Scientists from Georgia Tech can now blast a hole in a cell, place a molecule inside and seal it back up a split second later using a laser pulse. The new technique could deliver drugs, vaccines and other molecules that otherwise wouldn't be able to get past a cell's defenses. "Cells are surrounded by membranes, which keep what's inside, inside, and what's outside, outside," said Mark Prausnitz, a scientist at Georgia Tech and co-author of the new Nature Nanotechnology paper. "There is very little that can pass through the membrane, but our goal is to put molecules into cells that have a hard time getting (there)." Laser beams are only the latest way to deliver an outlying molecule inside a cell. Specialized channels embedded in the cell membrane actively pump some molecules into and out of the cell. If a molecule looks the part, it can slip past the cell membrane. Viruses use a special needle-like appendage to inject their genetic material into a cell. Certain chemicals and electrical charges can also temporarily puncture cell membranes.
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