{"id":101733,"date":"2020-02-01T16:46:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-02T00:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/trojan-horse-nanoparticle-eats-up-plaque-to-clear-arteries"},"modified":"2020-02-01T16:46:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T00:46:09","slug":"trojan-horse-nanoparticle-eats-up-plaque-to-clear-arteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/trojan-horse-nanoparticle-eats-up-plaque-to-clear-arteries","title":{"rendered":"Trojan Horse Nanoparticle Eats Up Plaque to Clear Arteries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/trojan-horse-nanoparticle-eats-up-plaque-to-clear-arteries2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A hungry <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/cool-tech\/tomato-nanoparticles\/\">nanoparticle<\/a> that enters your body and eats away at your insides sounds like a nightmare straight out of a Michael Crichton novel. In fact, it could be a future defense against heart attacks, strokes, and potentially other fatal diseases \u2014 as strange as that might initially sound.<\/p>\n<p>Developed by scientists at Michigan State and Stanford universities, the innovative new \u201cTrojan Horse\u201d nanoparticle works by munching away portions of the plaques responsible for heart attacks. In a proof-of-concept demonstration, the researchers recently showed that their specially developed nanoparticle is able to accurately home in on atherosclerotic plaque, which is responsible for atherosclerosis, one of the leading causes of death in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat the nanotherapy does is it enters inflammatory monocytes [a type of white blood cell] in the blood, and carries them into the plaque \u2014 hence the \u2018Trojan Horse\u2019 label \u2014 where they become macrophages, and stimulatesthose and other macrophages in plaque to devour cellular debris,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.egr.msu.edu\/people\/profile\/smit2901\">Bryan Smith<\/a>, associate professor of biomedical engineering at MSU, told Digital Trends. \u201cThis \u2018taking out the trash\u2019 attribute stabilizes the plaque with minimal side effects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A hungry nanoparticle that enters your body and eats away at your insides sounds like a nightmare straight out of a Michael Crichton novel. In fact, it could be a future defense against heart attacks, strokes, and potentially other fatal diseases \u2014 as strange as that might initially sound. Developed by scientists at Michigan State [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38,1506,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-engineering","category-food","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}