It’s no Harry Potter fantasy – scientists have created a drug that goes into stealth mode to better target inflammation, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Though only tested in mice, the advancement could benefit patients with chronic inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that affects about 1.5 million U.S. adults. The cloaked medication sneaks past the body’s immune system through nanotechnology to quickly reach the injury site, releasing inflammation-reducing chemicals.

“It’s like an invisibility cloak,” said Omid Farokhzad, MD, nanotechnologist at Harvard Medical School who co-authored the study and is on the board of directors for three biotechnology companies. “The surface of the nanoparticle has been designed to make them stealthy, to evade recognition by the immune system.”

This technology isn’t unique – inflammation reducing drugs and nanoparticles are both staples of the scientific community – however the combination of the two is an impressive achievement, said Adah Almutairi, PhD, a material chemist and nanoengineer at the University of California, San Diego who was not involved with the study.

“The anti-inflammatory agents in combination with the nanoparticles are the exciting part,” Dr. Almutairi added. “There’s a lot of nanotechnology in medicine, but not too many people focus on inflammation, and inflammation underlies a large number of diseases.”

Dr. Farokhzad and his team created the nanoparticles and filled them with inflammation-reducing peptides. The completed medication was given a special coating to encourage water to stick to it. This outer layer of water acts as the invisibility cloak, preventing white blood cells – the immune system’s first line of attack – from destroying the nanoparticles.

“(It’s) not Harry Potter magic,” Farokhzad said. “Small is fantastic.”

Small is an understatement. A red blood cell is about five times tinier than the width of a human hair. A nanoparticle is about 100,000 times tinier than the width of a human hair. When injected into arthritic mice, these nanoparticles directly target inflammation sites with no observable side effects, says Nazila Kamaly, PhD, a chemist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and co-lead author of the study.

A targeted medication means patients can take smaller doses, which reduces the risk of side effects and lowers costs. When someone takes a pill, it has to travel through the digestive tract before absorbing into the blood stream. The long journey wastes some of the medication. With nanotechnology, the medicine quickly targets injury like a homing pigeon, arriving at inflammation sites about four hours faster than the same medication taken without the help of nanotechnology.

“They fly over to the inflammatory site specifically,” Dr. Kamaly said.

Once the drug has found inflammation it begins to slowly release a controlled amount of chemicals that are designed to reduce the inflammatory response without harming the immune system. This is important because most rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drugs on the market compromise the body’s ability to fight infection.

In RA patients, inflammation is caused when the immune system overreacts and starts attacking healthy tissue. To counteract this effect, anti-inflammatory drugs try to suppress the immune system. This reduces inflammation but also opens up RA patients to a host of other issues.

“The danger of suppressing the immune system is you’ll block the two major benefits of inflammation: you’ll block the ability to kill the infection, and you’ll block the ability to repair the tissue,” said Ira Tabas, MD, PhD, a cardiovascular researcher at the Columbia University Medical Center and co-author of the study.

While the drug does not have the immunocompromising effects of market medications, it’s also nowhere close to FDA approval. Researchers say their next step is to test the drug in larger animal models and then eventually move on to humans.

“Rheumatoid arthritis is a very devastating disease,” Dr. Tabas said. “Certainly the major therapy out there now is excellent but it’s not perfect and if there were a drug that could be used with therapy I imagine it would be extremely valuable in terms of sickness.”