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In a study  outlining newly developed technology, scientists are described harnessing an electric field in order to identify and remove nanoparticles that were part of drug delivery from the blood stream, said a press release.

This technology can be used in medical, industrial and environmental applications so that nanoparticles can be removed not only from blood but other complex fluids too.

The technology will also help scientists to get an insight into how nanoparticles are being affected even as they remain in patients' bloodstreams. They are very useful for scientists who use drug-delivery nanoparticles for therapeutic treatments.

"This is the first example of isolating a wide range of nanoparticles out of plasma with a minimum amount of manipulation," said Stuart Ibsen, lead author of the study. "We've designed a very versatile technique that can be used to recover nanoparticles in a lot of different processes."

As the nanoparticles are very tiny, about a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, they are difficult to separate from blood plasma. Currently, the techniques employed for isolation are very difficult to apply to some nanoparticle types, and can even change their behaviour, according to HNGN.

The technology that is explained in the study uses a chip that can function well in the high-salt concentration in blood plasma, enabling it to collect nanoparticles from the plasma through an oscillating electric field that can pull them out and leave the plasma behind, attributing them to differences in attractive force.

"We were interested in a fast and easy way to take these nanoparticles out of plasma so we could find out what's going on at their surfaces and redesign them to work more effectively in blood," said Michael Heller, senior author of the study.