NanoComputer

Since the heart is such a del­i­cate and crit­ical organ, clin­i­cians usu­ally opt not to inter­vene with the dead cells that remain after a heart attack or car­diac dis­ease. “But we think that all heart attacks deserve some kind of treat­ment because it puts so much stress on the rest of the heart,” said Thomas Web­ster, pro­fessor and chair of the Depart­ment of Chem­ical Engi­neering at Northeastern University. “Even a square cen­timeter of dead heart tissue can put sig­nif­i­cant strain on the rest of the heart, which has to pick up the slack”, he said.

Webster’s ear­lier work demon­strated that adding nanofea­tures to an implanted med­ical device like a tita­nium knee or hip joint helps the car­ti­lage cells adhere to the device. This pro­motes tissue growth and allows the patient to heal more readily, he explained. While his team mem­bers don’t know exactly why this hap­pens, they have a good idea. They think the nanofea­tures allow the sur­face to more accu­rately mimic the nat­ural envi­ron­ment in the body, thus pro­viding more hab­it­able accom­mo­da­tions for the new cells.

But tita­nium hearts aren’t a viable option. Instead, they uti­lized a hydrogel, which they’d devel­oped pre­vi­ously, to mimic the heart cells them­selves. They added carbon nan­otubes to the hydrogel, making it con­duc­tive, and then injected the mate­rial into the heart, where it solid­i­fies at body tem­per­a­ture. Because the hydrogel is “super sticky,” it adheres extremely well to the tissue sur­face and imme­di­ately begins expanding and con­tracting in sync with the beating of the heart. While the team hasn’t yet tested the mate­rial in an animal model, it has sim­u­lated these con­di­tions in the lab.

Source: http://www.northeastern.edu/

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University – OHSU – have made a significant breakthrough in efforts to develop human stem cell therapies that may be used to combat numerous devastating diseases. For the first time, scientists have successfully derived embryonic stem cells by reprogramming of genetic material from skin cells while studying rhesus macaque monkeys. The breakthrough follows several previously unsuccessful attempts by the OHSU-based team and other scientific teams worldwide.

“Many scientists believe that embryonic stem cells hold great promise for treating a variety of diseases including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cardiac disease and spinal cord injuries,” explained Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D., director of the OHSU-based research team. “Using our advanced methods, it is conceivable that years from now, patients could receive therapeutic embryonic stem cells developed from their very own cells meaning that there would be no concerns about transplant rejection. Another noteworthy aspect of this research is that it does not involve the use of fertilized embryos, a topic which has been the source of a significant ethical debate in this country. ”

Neverthless “it’s a matter of time before they produce a cloned monkey,” said Jose Cibelli, a cloning expert at Michigan State University, who wasn’t involved in the study. It also means, he added, “that they are one step closer to where the efficiency is high enough that someone is willing to try” to clone a person.

The results of the work were released online by the scientific journal Nature.
Source: http://www.ohsu.edu

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have devised a ‘magic bullet’ nanomedicine which could become the first effective treatment for Acute Lung Injury or ALI, a condition affecting 20 per cent of all patients in intensive care. Many with the condition die as a result of lung failure.
ALI patients can become critically ill and develop problems with breathing when their lungs become inflamed and fill with fluid. The new drug, a nanoparticle, measuring around one billionth of a metre. could revolutionise clinical management of patients in intensive care units. The patient can inhale it, taking the drug directly into the lungs and to the point of inflammation. Current treatments are unable to target directly the inflammation and can result in unpleasant side effects.

“Nanoparticles are perhaps one of the most exciting new approaches to drug development. Most research in the area focuses on how the delivery of drugs to the disease site can be improved in these minute carriers. Our own research in this area focuses on how nanoparticles interact with cells and how this can be exploited to produce therapeutic effects both in respiratory disease and cancer.”, said Professor Chris Scott from the School of Pharmacy, who is leading the research.

Source: http://www.qub.ac.uk/

Physicists of the University of Vienna together with researchers from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna developed nano-machines which recreate principal activities of proteins. They present the first versatile and modular example of a fully artificial protein-mimetic model system, thanks to the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC), a high performance computing infrastructure. These “bionic proteins” could play an important role in innovating pharmaceutical research. The results have now been published in the journal “Physical Review Letters“.

Proteins are the fundamental building blocks of all living organism we currently know. Because of the large number and complexity of bio-molecular processes they are capable of, proteins are often referred to as “molecular machines“. Take for instance the proteins in your muscles: At each contraction stimulated by the brain, an uncountable number of proteins change their structures to create the collective motion of the contraction. This extraordinary process is performed by molecules which have a size of only about a nanometer, a billionth of a meter. Muscle contraction is just one of the numerous activities of proteins: There are proteins that transport cargo in the cells, proteins that construct other proteins, there are even cages in which proteins that “mis-behave” can be trapped for correction, and the list goes on and on. “Imitating these astonishing bio-mechanical properties of proteins and transferring them to a fully artificial system is our long term objective“, says Ivan Coluzza from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Vienna, who works on this project together with colleagues of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna.

Source: http://medienportal.univie.ac.at/

Molecular biologists at The University of Texas at Austin have solved one of the mysteries of how double-stranded RNA is remodeled inside cells in both their normal and disease states. The discovery will have great implications for treating cancer and viruses in humans. They use chemical energy to clamp down and pry open RNA strands, thereby enabling the formation of new structures. This remodeling of RNA is essential to the basic functioning of cells.

“If you want to couple fuel energy to mechanical work to drive strand separation, this is a very versatile mechanism,” said co-author Alan Lambowitz, the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Regents Chair in Molecular Biology in the College of Natural Sciences and director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology. “These findings could have far-reaching implications for our ability to control the activities of proteins in this class when their functions go awry in disease states,” comments Michael Bender, program director in the Division of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the National Institutes of Health, which partially funded the work.
Source: http://web5.cns.utexas.edu/news/2012/09/ancient-enzymes-function-like-nanopistons-to-unwind-rna/

Bioengineered replacements for tendons, ligaments, the meniscus of the knee, and other tissues require re-creation of the exquisite architecture of these tissues in three dimensions. These fibrous, collagen-based tissues located throughout the body have an ordered structure that gives them their robust ability to bear extreme mechanical loading. Many labs have been designing treatments for ACL and meniscus tears of the knee, rotator cuff injuries, and Achilles tendon ruptures for patients ranging from the weekend warrior to the elite Olympian. One popular approach has involved the use of scaffolds made from nano-sized fibers, which can guide tissue to grow in an organized way. Unfortunately, the fibers' widespread application in orthopaedics has been slowed because cells do not readily colonize the scaffolds if fibers are too tightly packed.

Robert L. Mauck, PhD , professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering, and Brendon M. Baker, PhD , previously a graduate student in the Mauck lab at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania , have developed and validated a new technology in which composite nanofibrous scaffolds provide a loose enough structure for cells to colonize without impediment, but still can instruct cells how to lay down new tissue . Their findings appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These are tiny fibers with a huge potential that can be unlocked by including a temporary, space-holding element," says Mauck. The fibers are on the order of nanometers in diameter. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Source: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/08/composite/

Zinc oxide would be the perfect sunscreen ingredient if the product didn't look quite so silly. Thick, white and pasty, it was once seen mostly on lifeguards, surfers and others who needed serious protection. But when sunscreens are made with nanoparticles, the tiniest substances that humans can engineer, they turn clear — which makes them more user-friendly.Sunscreen is just one of the many uses of nanotechnology, which drastically shrinks and fundamentally changes the structure of chemical compounds, but products made with nanomaterials also raise largely unanswered safety questions — such as whether the particles that make them effective can be absorbed into the bloodstream and are toxic to living cells.

We haven't characterized these materials very well yet in terms of what the potential impacts on living organisms could be,” said Kathleen Eggleson, a research scientist at the Center for Nanoscience and Technology at the University of Notre Dame.Scientists don't yet know how long nanoparticles stay in the human body or what they might do there. Animal research has found that inhaled nanoparticles can reach all areas of the respiratory tract; because of their small size and shape, they can migrate quickly into cells and organs.The smaller particles may pose risks to the heart and blood vessels, .Still unknown is “how significant (potential damage) would be, how much nanomaterial would be needed to cause appreciable harm, and how well the body would be able to deal with the material and recover,” said Andrew Maynard, director of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center.
Source. Source: http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/30536-notre-dame-leads-in-the-discussion-of-the-ethical-and-societal-impacts-of-nanotechnology/

One of the difficulties doctors face in treating multiple myeloma (MM) comes from the fact that cancer cells of this type start to develop resistance to the leading chemotherapeutic treatment, doxorubicin, when they adhere to tissue in bone marrow. Now researchers from the University of Notre Dame have engineered nanoparticles that show great promise for the treatment of the MM, an incurable cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow.

The nanoparticles are coated with a special peptide that targets a specific receptor on the outside of multiple myeloma cells. These receptors cause the cells to adhere to bone marrow tissue and turn on the drug resistance mechanisms. But through the use of the newly developed peptide, the nanoparticles are able to bind to the receptors instead and prevent the cancer cells from adhering to the bone marrow in the first place.

Our research on mice shows that the nanoparticle formulation reduces the toxic effect doxorubicin has on other tissues, such as the kidneys and liver,” says Tanyel Kiziltepe , a research assistant professor with the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and AD&T at Notre Dame University.

Source: http://newsinfo.nd.edu/news/31468-multifunctional-nanoparticles-promise-to-improve-blood-cancer-treatment/

Using a technique known as “nucleic acid origami,” chemical engineers have built tiny particles made out of DNA and RNA that can deliver snippets of RNA directly to tumors, turning off genes expressed in cancer cells.To achieve this type of gene shutdown, known as RNA interference, many researchers have tried — with some success — to deliver RNA with particles made from polymers or lipids. However, those materials can pose safety risks and are difficult to target, says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of health sciences and technology and chemical engineering, and a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. 

Researchers successfully used this nanoparticle, made from several strands of DNA and RNA, to turn off a gene in tumor cells. 

“When you think of metastatic cancer, you don’t want to just stop in the liver,” Anderson says. “You also want to get to more diverse sites.”

Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/rna-interference-lightweight-nanoparticle-0604.html

Cornell engineers, taking an engineer's approach to making synthetic blood vessels have designed  tiny, 3-D microchannels in a soft biomaterial and injected human umbilical vein endothelial cells into the channels. They embedded tissue cells from the brain into the surrounding gel and watched the interactions between the "vessels" and cells, which commonly surround microvessels in the body.
Let's remind that human tissue, be it in the heart, brain or bones, can't function without a vascular system — the intricate network of vessels that circulate life-sustaining blood and nutrients.

Here, left picture,  you see a reconstruction of fluorescence confocal micrographs of a microvascular network with endothelial-cell lines channels (red) and perivascular cells (green) in collagen. 

Signals from these tissue cells led to new blood vessels sprouting from the originals — a living network of blood vessels engineered completely in vitro.The results, which could lead to new techniques in regenerative medicine and better drug delivery strategies, are from the lab of Abe Stroock, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and member of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.

Source: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May12/stroockMicrovessels.html

A Spanish and French research team have described a new technique for measuring the temperature inside a single cell without altering the cell’s metabolism. 

The new technique uses transfected green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a temperature nanoprobe and measures the polarization anisotropy of the GFP fluorescence. This rapid and non-invasive thermal nanoscopy differs from previous intents in that it does not alter cellular processes with the introduction of synthetic nano-objects. Furthermore, it is fully compatible with widespread GFP cellular biology.This advance complements the optical toolbox for biologists and could help to provide new understanding of cellular processes, such as those involved in Cancer.

The research is published in NanoLetters, by Jon Donner, Sebastian Thompson and Mark Kreuzer in the group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO, Romain Quidant, in collaboration with Guillaume Baffou, ex-ICFOnian now at Institut Fresnel in Marseille, France, 

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl300389y

Alliance researchers, Robert Langer, Sc.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Omid Farokhzad, M.D., (Harvard Medical School), with a team of researchers from BIND Biosciences demonstrated the ability of a nanomedicine to target a receptor found on cancer cells and accumulate at tumor sites. The study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, indicates the treatment is safe in mice and is capable of shrinking patient tumors.

The nanoparticles feature a homing molecule that allows them to specifically attack cancer cells, and are the first such targeted particles to enter human clinical studies. Originally developed by researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the particles are designed to carry the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, used to treat lung, prostate and breast cancers, among others The particles were also shown to be safe and effective: Many of the patients’ tumors shrank as a result of the treatment, even when they received lower doses than those usually administered. 

Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/cancer-particle-0404.html

Using light-harvesting nanoparticles to convert laser energy into “plasmonic nanobubbles,” researchers at Rice University,in Houston, USA,  the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) are developing new methods to inject drugs and genetic payloads directly into cancer cells. In tests on drug-resistant cancer cells, the researchers found that delivering chemotherapy drugs with nanobubbles was up to 30 times more deadly to cancer cells than traditional drug treatment and required less than one-tenth the clinical dose.

Click here to enjoy the video demonstration

“We are delivering cancer drugs or other genetic cargo at the single-cell level,” said Rice’s Dmitri Lapotko, a biologist and physicist whose plasmonic nanobubble technique is the subject of four new peer-reviewed studies, including one due later this month in the journal Biomaterials and another published April 3 in the journal PLoS ONE. “By avoiding healthy cells and delivering the drugs directly inside cancer cells, we can simultaneously increase drug efficacy while lowering the dosage,” he said.

Source: http://news.rice.edu/2012/04/09/nanobubbles-plus-chemotherapy-equals-single-cell-cancer-targeting/

At the heart of the immune system that protects our bodies from disease and foreign invaders is a vast and complex communications network involving millions of cells, sending and receiving chemical signals that can mean life or death. At the heart of this vast cellular signaling network are interactions between billions of proteins and other biomolecules. These interactions, in turn, are greatly influenced by the spatial patterning of signaling and receptor molecules.   Biology is a game of nanometers, where spatial differences of only a few nanometers can determine the fate of a cell – whether it lives or dies, remains normal or turns cancerous. A scientific team led by chemist Jay Groves (Berkeley Lab and the University of California – UC- Berkeley) has used supported membranes to demonstrate that living cells not only interact with their environment through chemical signals but also through physical force.

click here to enjoy the video demonstration

The ability to observe signaling spatial patterns in the immune and other cellular systems as they evolve, and to study the impact on molecular interactions and, ultimately, cellular communication, would be a critical tool in the fight against immunological and other disorders that lead to a broad range of health problems including cancer.  
Such a tool is now at hand.

Source: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2012/03/23/a-shiny-new-tool-for-imaging-biomolecules/

“Solar photovoltaics still remains one of the fastest growing industries in the world. To enable more efficient  utilization of this free, clean energy, the efficiencies of the solar cells have to increase and their manufacturing costs decrease.  ROD-SOL’s silicon nanorod cell concept shows promising potential to this, and we at Picosun have been especially satisfied of the ALD’s central role in realizing this novel, innovative, high efficiency solar electricity converter”, states Picosun’s Managing Director Juhana Kostamo.

Source: http://www.picosun.com/pdf/Picosun_Press_Release_RODSOL_Eng_FINAL_31st_Dec_2011.pdf