Hello,

Interesting idea. You must keep in mind however that sperm travel toward oviducts so it must be a drug with that target. Now, the process of drug encapsulation would be quite difficult. A drug "injection" into sperm would be laborious and most likely would damage the sperm membrane making it unable to do the journey in the females genital tract. A "passive" encapsulation in which the sperm would be put in a medium containing the drug would also fail, in my opinion. First, such medium could be toxic for the sperm. Secondly, if the medium enters the sperm cells, it means that sperm membranes are altered, so (again) the sperm won't be able to do the journey. Only healthy sperm reach the oviduct and healthy sperm have intact membranes.

Other than that, thumbs up for thinking of advances in research and I hope your ideas will get to be put in practice in the future.

Regards

Hello Iulian Ibanescu,

About the encapsulation process, I thought in more passive methods. Maybe the encapsulation should be in the formation of sperm in the germ cells with a genetic modification.

Dear Adolfo,

Wow, you are thinking really far ahead. You mean that the spermatogonia would already contain the drug? And that the males should be genetically modified to a point in which their testes would store the drug in the spermatogonia?

Dear lulian

It is not necessary that the testicles store the drug. The spermatogonia could be genetically modified in a cell culture to produce the drug. But is it necessary for the sperm to travel through the oviducts? I mean, sperm can not travel through other ducts? E.g., the veins?

I appreciate your interest in my questions. It's a theme that comes from my head and I would love to continue talking about this.

Regards

As far as I know, there is still a lot of work to be done before spermatogenesis outside the testicles will become practicable. Some successfull experiments were performed, but we still have to wait until it's a sure thing that can be included in practice. Furthermore, genetically modifying sperm can be tricky and again, not that easy to do.

Sperm can travel through other media too, but only in the female genital tract there is that chemotaxis that makes them travel towards a target (oviducts=Fallopian tubes) and also a chemical composition that helps them maintain their mobility and undergo capacitation.

Traveling through the veins would not be possible, as the white blood cells would attack and kill them.

Regards

Let me first put this quote "imagination is more important than knowledge". But you have got wrong in thinking that sperm would act as nanocariers, because the size of sperm is in microns (60-70micometer). So the idea of sperm can act as nanocariers fall down. Secondly Lulian rightly wrote that sperm can not travel through veins because it will be recognised as foreign body as its membrane is loaded with n number of proteins. So before thinking them as drug cariers, these little wonderful cells need not to be immunogenic which is simply impossible.

Thank you Lulian and Farooz for clarifying that it is not possible to make sperms travel through other body channels and have them transport drugs.

But as you say Farooz, we must not stop imagining.

Regards

Dear all

Thanks all of you it was very interesting topic, as Farooz Lone says imagining is important than knowledge, in my opinion even though the sperm bigger than the nano particles but it can be used as a carrier for nano-materials; thus, we shouldn't quit. Furthermore, it can be used not in vein or to move for very long distance, it might be injected in particular tissues with carrying nano-particles, again very interesting topic I will keep following comments

Regards

As far as my knowledge is concerned, nanoparticles themselves act as carriers, are used to transport material for targeted delivery so these carriers should be able to enter a cell and release the materiale.g for drugs so that these drugs are taken by these nanoparticles to their target sit. These particles are engineered so that they are attracted to disease cells only thus reduces damage to healthy cells. Therefore injecting microcarrier in to tissues does not meet the definition of nanocariers because the microcarrier can not enter into the cell. Alternatively why not to inject the nanomaterial into the tissue. The definition of nancarriers is specific with respect to tissues which we can not reach or to avoid the harmful effect to healthy cells. So imagination should fill the criteria of definition first then only it becomes more important than knowledge.

good imagination. but i agree with Farooz Lone

Thanks Hala Jawad Alfatlawy for agreeing.