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Drug delivery

Stealth particles give mucus the slip

Mucus presents a formidable barrier to nanoparticle drug-delivery systems, but adding a coating of polymer molecules helps them sneak through the net.

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Figure 1: Mucus structure and its role in drug delivery.
Figure 2: A scaled representation of the mucus gel depicted as a complex, porous network, and some relevant foreign constituents.

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Cu, Y., Saltzman, W. Stealth particles give mucus the slip. Nature Mater 8, 11–13 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2347

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