Nanomedicine Archives

DNA Nanorobot Developed for Future Immune Responses Programming

by Stanley Darma on Feb 17, 2012 •

dna nanorobot DNA Nanorobot Developed for Future Immune Responses ProgrammingInspired by the white blood cells of the human immune system, researcher from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a nanorobot made of DNA, which has the potential to target specific cells and trigger responses by delivering molecular instructions. They have reported their findings in Science. The discovery holds great potential for the future, as new types of targeted therapies can be developed using these nanobots.

Shawn Douglas and Ido Bachelet managed to create the miniscule robot using the DNA origami method, which enables to construct complex 3D shapes by folding DNA strands. The nanorobot is basically a DNA barrel, which acts as a container for molecules. The DNA barrel is held shut by special DNA latches, which recognize certain combinations of cell-surface proteins. If it finds its target, the barrel is opened and the content is exposed to the specific target. By using antibody fragments as the contents of the  barrel, Douglas and Bachelet were able to make two different types of cancer cells self-destruct.

The video down below will explain it all for you:

Harvard announcement: Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute Develop DNA Nanorobot to Trigger Targeted Therapeutic Responses

Genetics / in the news... / Nanomedicine

Three Dimensional Brain Tumor Construct Created in Lab

by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 16, 2012
Three Dimensional Brain Tumor Construct Created in Lab

Not all cancers are created equal. While some are easy to study in the Petri dish, others don’t do well in vitro. They often will not grow without a supporting framework of angiogenic blood vessels that supply their high metabolism with nutrients and oxygen. Performing experiments on tumors such as glioma is a difficult proposition because they only wish to reside in the body and normally don’t survive when grown outside in a laboratory environment.

Researchers at Brown University have now managed to grow a three-dimensional glioma tumor, including the supporting proximal blood vessels, and are already using it to perform experiments testing a nanomedicine approach to tumor destruction.

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Art / Nanomedicine / Public Health

Flashing Bacteria Used As Alarm System for Arsenic

by Jan Sinnige on Dec 20, 2011
Flashing Bacteria Used As Alarm System for Arsenic

Researchers at UC San Diego have built a bacterial light source of about 13,000 ‘biopixels’, as they call it. Their work on synchronized fluorescent protein expression was published in Nature last week. This is not only a new form of art but also a piece of high tech bioengineering. The light producing chips consist of more than 50 million bacteria that interact and synchronize with each other using a mechanism known as quorum sensing, a method in which bacteria communicate with their fellows and gives them group-like behavior. They can regulate gene expression according to the density of the population or to determine adaptation strategies to their local environment.

The researchers in San Diego coupled the expression of a fluorescent protein to a biological clock which is synchronized with other colonies using a quorum sensing mechanism. In this way the bacteria will periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs.

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Nanomedicine / Ophthalmology

Nanoparticles to Deliver Steroids to the Retina

by Stanley Darma on Dec 13, 2011
Nanoparticles to Deliver Steroids to the Retina

A collaboration of researchers from Wayne State University, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine has discovered a potential new treatment for macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. The investigators managed to attach steroids to dendrimers nanoparticles and showed that the drugs only targeted the activated microglia, the damage-causing cells associated with neuroinflammation. The researchers published their article online in the journal Biomaterials.

Age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa are leading causes of blindness worldwide. Neuroinflammation plays a big role in both diseases. Activated microglia release substances that damage certain cells in the retina, which eventually can lead to vision loss.

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Nanomedicine

Researchers Non-Invasively Monitor Nanotubes in Live Cells, Blood

by Gene Ostrovsky on Dec 5, 2011
Researchers Non-Invasively Monitor Nanotubes in Live Cells, Blood

Researchers at Purdue have developed a method of monitoring both metallic and semiconducting nanotubes within cells and blood plasma without using any kind of marking or dying labels. The method, called transient absorption, uses two near-infrared lasers to energize and detect the shining nanotubes.

The method should be useful for monitoring the effects of nano-based treatments during laboratory and clinical development.

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Genetics / in the news... / Medgadget Exclusive / Nanomedicine / Thoracic Surgery

First Artificial Trachea Implants Breathe Life into Tissue Engineering

by Brian Klein on Dec 5, 2011
First Artificial Trachea Implants Breathe Life into Tissue Engineering

Last week, we announced that the second artificial trachea implant procedure had been performed under the leadership of Paolo Macchiarini, MD, PhD at the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden). To get some perspective on what this news means for the field of medicine and tissue engineering, Medgadget spoke with Dr. Macchiarini as well as David Green, president of Harvard Bioscience (Holliston, MA), a company that made the bioreactor used to create the tissue-engineered trachea implants.

“The most important thing to me is that we now have evidence that regenerative medicine has promise; we’ve proved that it works in the clinic,” says Macchiarini.

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Genetics / Nanomedicine / Thoracic Surgery

World’s First Artificial Trachea Transplant Patient Gets Successor

by Stanley Darma on Nov 30, 2011
World’s First Artificial Trachea Transplant Patient Gets Successor

A few months ago we reported about the first artificial trachea transplant performed at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. A patient had a carinal tumor that extended to the lowest 5 cm of the trachea along with the bronchi, so removal alone couldn’t save the patient. The team of surgeons removed the affected area and replaced it with a synthetic engineered trachea. The project was headed by Professor Paolo Macchiarini. Now, five months later, the study and successful outcome has been published in The Lancet by the doctors who performed the procedure.

The successful outcome of this operation, involving a transplant made of stem-cell-seeded nanocomposite, provides proof of the viability of this approach. Macchiarini says this method offers advantages, like preventing rejection or use of immunosuppressive drugs by using the patient’s own cells. Also, the implant can be tailor-made for the patient, because it is artificially constructed.

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Nanomedicine

New Technique for Mapping Mechanical Properties of Living Cells

by Stanley Darma on Nov 23, 2011
New Technique for Mapping Mechanical Properties of Living Cells

Research teams from Purdue University and the University of Oxford are collaboratively developing a system which can measure the mechanical properties of living cells. To study the different types of cells they make use of an atomic force microscope. Up until now methods using atomic force microscopes were either too slow or did not have a high enough resolution. Professor Arvind Raman and his team have overcome these limitations and they reported their findings online in Nature Nanotechnology.

Atomic force microscopes make use of a small vibrating probe to gather information about materials and surfaces on the scale of nanometers. It makes it possible to ‘see’ certain objects which cannot be visualized using light microscopes. Therefore such microscopes could prove to be very useful in creating a kind of ‘map’ of mechanical properties of the smallest cellular structures.

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Diagnostics / Nanomedicine / Oncology

Gold Nanoparticle Sensor Proving Effective in Lung Cancer Detection in Early Trial

by Gene Ostrovsky on Nov 17, 2011
Gold Nanoparticle Sensor Proving Effective in Lung Cancer Detection in Early Trial

A researcher collaboration between scientists at University of Colorado–Denver and Technion–Israel Institute of Technology has successfully tested a gold nanoparticle (GNP)-based sensor that can detect lung cancer (LC) markers in a patient’s breath. The technology, which we’ve been following at Medgadget for a few years now (see flashbacks below), is able to rapidly identify small molecule volatile organic compounds that might point to the presence of lung cancer.

The team compared the sensor to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry identification finding that the new device provided “significant discrimination between (i) LC and healthy states; (ii) small cell LC and non–small cell LC; and between (iii) two subtypes of non–small cell LC: adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.”

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