The ability to engineer particles that can enter a human body and transport a drug directly to a targeted cell is revolutionizing how medicine is delivered. A team of researchers from the University of Illinois has now created a new nanoparticle therapy that can target and destroy cancer stem cells to stop the disease returning.

The fear of relapse is one that constantly haunts cancer patients after any initial treatment has moved the disease into remission, but understanding how and why cancer returns eluded scientists for many years. In the mid-1990s, researcher John Dick first identified cancer stem cells, upending the field of cancer research and pointing to an entirely new area of study for scientists.

The discovery was that some cancers can be generated by these cancer stem cells (CSCs), and many existing treatments, while effective in destroying fast-growing cancer cells, completely miss these CSCs.