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Designing nano-sized chemotherapy

Nanoparticles carrying chemotherapeutic drugs could help people with cancer escape some of the drugs’ side effects, hopes Silvia Giordani.
  1. Virginia Gewin

    1. Virginia Gewin is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon.

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Silvia Giordani in her lab at Dublin City University, Ireland.

Silvia Giordani is professor, chair of nanomaterials and head of the school of chemical science at Dublin City University in Ireland. Credit: Chris Maddaloni for Nature

As a teenager, I realized I was too sensitive to suffering to become a medical doctor, yet I still wanted to cure the world. I focused on chemistry for my PhD at the University of Miami, Florida, and then pursued physics as a postdoc at Trinity College Dublin, working on carbon nanotubes. The large surface area of nanomaterials gives them unique optical and electrical properties. I learnt that I could add nanoscale ‘switches’ to direct the nanotubes to perform specific functions in human cells. As toxicity concerns grew over nanotubes because of their rigid, hollow shape, I began working on carbon nanoparticles, which have those same desirable properties.

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Nature 593, 470 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01322-2

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 26 May 2021: An earlier version of the picture caption in this story gave the wrong affiliation for Silvia Giordani.

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