IBM’s Nanotechnology Rips Up Drug-Resistant Germ Cells in Study

International Business Machines Corp., the world’s largest computer-services provider, is developing a technology that searches out drug-resistant germs in the body and destroys them, addressing a $34 billion-a-year public health problem.

Engineers based in IBM’s San Jose, California, facility have created nanoparticles 50,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair that can obliterate the cell walls of drug-resistant bacteria. The structures then harmlessly degrade, leaving no residue, according to a study describing the work in the journal Nature Chemistry.