In recent years, scientists have created artificial microscopic and nanoscopic self-propelling particles, often referred to
as nano- or microswimmers, capable of mimicking biological locomotion and taxis. This active diffusion enables the
engineering of complex operations that so far have not been possible at the micro- and nanoscale. One of the most
promising tasks is the ability to engineer nanocarriers that can autonomously navigate within tissues and organs,
accessing nearly every site of the human body guided by endogenous chemical gradients. We report a fully synthetic,
organic, nanoscopic system that exhibits attractive chemotaxis driven by enzymatic conversion of glucose. We achieve
this by encapsulating glucose oxidase alone or in combination with catalase into nanoscopic and biocompatible
asymmetric polymer vesicles (known as polymersomes). We show that these vesicles self-propel in response to an
external gradient of glucose by inducing a slip velocity on their surface, which makes them move in an extremely
sensitive way toward higher-concentration regions. We finally demonstrate that the chemotactic behavior of these
nanoswimmers, in combination with LRP-1 (low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1) targeting, enables a
fourfold increase in penetration to the brain compared to nonchemotactic systems.