In this image, targeted nanoparticles--each about 1/100th the size of a human cell and engineered to be stealthy within the body--deliver high doses of chemotherapy to cancer cells. A team of researchers led by Omid Farokhzad at Brigham and Women's Hospital and MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer has demonstrated the precision required to engineer a nanoparticle that is effective in targeted drug delivery. Details of their work were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Image / Nicolle Rager Fuller, Sayo-Art

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 13, 2008 (download PDF).