Nanomedicine Archives

A team led by Sandia National Laboratories researchers has developed a new manufacturing technique that puts a critical kink into the lumen of a nanopore. Due to their natural properties, nanopores, which are only slightly larger than DNA molecules, one day might be used to comprehensively characterize DNA, RNA, and proteins passing through. A consistent problem with nanopores has stemmed from the fact that DNA passes too quick through them, but a new technique of placing a kink inside the nanopores slows down the DNA passing through five fold.
From a Sandia press release:

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Scientists from University of Washington and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor have devised a novel nanoparticle powered imaging technique that may soon be able to pinpoint individual cells among a larger mass of tissue. The method uses well-defined iron oxide and gold-coupled core-shell nanoparticles that, when attached to given tissue, can be made to vibrate and to show up on a photoacoustic imager.
University of Washington press office explains:

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Arsenic has a long history in medicine, with arsenic trioxide (As2O3) first being used in the treatment of some conditions as early as 2000 BC. Today, arsenic trioxide is recognized as a potent chemotherapeutic agent and is used in the treatment of hematological malignancies. Unfortunately, As2O3 has not demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of solid tumors as it is rapidly cleared, necessitating toxic doses to reach therapeutic concentrations.
Recently, in a wonderful example of cutting-edge technology applied to old world solutions, Dr. Richard Ahn and colleagues at Northwestern University have developed a nanoparticulate formulation of As2O3 encapsulated in liposomal vesicles (nanobins), which demonstrated the ability to deliver therapeutic concentrations of arsenic trioxide to triple-negative breast carcinomas in a murine model. The nanobin technology effectively shields healthy cells from its payload while maintaining stability. Currently the group is working to incorporate antibodies on the surface of the nanobins to improve their efficacy, and to deliver multiple drugs.

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University of Pennsylvania researchers have been developing graphene nanopores that could one day be used as electronic DNA sequencing mechanisms. Because the thickness of graphene sheets is smaller than the distance between base pairs on a DNA molecule, there’s an expectation that graphene can be a potential sequencing platform. The good news is that U Penn researchers already are able to use such nanopores to detect single DNA molecules passing through.
From a press statement by U Penn:

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A team of researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center announced yesterday that they have improved the targeting of laser-induced thermal therapy (LITT), an experimental cancer treatment. In LITT, nanoparticles are introduced to the area around a tumor, and then laser treatment is used to heat up the nanoparticles and destroy the cancerous tissue. The Wake Forest researchers improved the treatment by using iron-containing multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), which can be tracked within the patient’s body through the use of MRI, thereby allowing more precise delivery of laser treatment and better targeting of neoplastic tissue.
From the Wake Forest press release:

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Chinese scientists at Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics have shown that graphene, a material which is a sheet of carbon exactly one atom thick, does not allow the growth of bacteria on its surface. This is in contrast to mammalian cells which seem to do just fine when in contact with the graphene.
From the article abstract in ACS NANO:

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