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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

How to smuggle a drug into cells: add a lipid ‘tail’

Molecules equipped with a lipid streamer of just the right length can wriggle through a cell’s defensive membrane.
Fluorescence micrograph of a HeLa cervical cancer cell with DNA in blue, microtubules in red and myosin 15 in green.

Dye molecules can enter cells, such as this cervical cancer cell, more easily if they are decorated with a medium-sized lipid chain. Credit: National Institutes of Health/Science Photo Library

Small molecules given lipid ‘tails’ that are not too long or too short can slip through cell membranes and enter living cells1.

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Nature 610, 608 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03282-7

References

  1. Morstein, J. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.2c07833 (2022).

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