Tag Archives: nanomedicine

Heat and light signifying much from a new nanoparticle at the University of Toronto

Paraphrasing from Shakespeare’s play MacBeth for this piece is a stretch but I can’t resist. The title comes from the speech MacBeth gives on hearing of his wife’s death (from The Tragedy of MacBeth webpage on the MIT website),

… Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. [emphasis mine]

Enough of the digression. Scientists at the Princess Margaret Hospital and the University of Toronto, have engineered a nanoparticle that uses light and heat to destroy tumours and light and sound to find and image tumours. From the March 20, 2011 news release on the University of Toronto website,

“In the lab, we combined two naturally occurring molecules (chlorophyll and lipid) to create a unique nanoparticle that shows promise for numerous diverse light-based (biophotonic) applications,” Professor [Gang] Zheng said. “The structure of the nanoparticle, which is like a miniature and colourful water balloon, means it can also be filled with drugs to treat the tumor it is targeting.”

It works this way, explains first author Jonathan Lovell, a doctoral student at IBBME [Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering] and OCI [Ontario Cancer Institute]: “Photothermal therapy uses light and heat to destroy tumors. With the nanoparticle’s ability to absorb so much light and accumulate in tumors, a laser can rapidly heat the tumor to a temperature of 60 degrees and destroy it. The nanoparticle can also be used for photoacoustic imaging, which combines light and sound to produce a very high-resolution image that can be used to find and target tumors.”

Here’s what makes this such a breakthrough,

This nanomaterial is also non-toxic, explained Professor Warren Chan of IBBME, another author of the paper. “Jon Lovell and Gang Zheng created a material that doesn’t have metals, [which] means no toxins, but with similar tunable properties to its metal nanostructure brother,” he said. This is the first reported organic nanostructure with such a unique feature, he noted, and so provides a significant opportunity to explore unique designs of organic nanostructures for biomedical applications without concerns regarding toxicity.

I recently mentioned Professor Zheng’s work in the context of a recent funding announcement from the Canadian Space Agency and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in my March 17, 2011 posting.

If I recall rightly and this is a pretty simple explanation, organic chemistry includes the element of carbon while inorganic excludes it.

Canadian Space Agency funds nanomedicine?

I suppose it’s ignorance but I can’t quite fathom why the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) [ETA March 17, 2011: Corrected the mane of the Agency from Canada Space Agency to Canadian Space Agency] is partnering with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to fund nanomedicine. I don’t understand how that fits into the CSA’s mandate. The March 16, 2011 news item on Nanowerk doesn’t answer my questions,

Research on nanomedicine and regenerative medicine is designed to prevent disease and improve human health. Nanomedicine delivers medical technologies that detect or function at the molecular level to diagnose and treat disease, while regenerative medicine stimulates the renewal of bodily tissues and organs or restores function through natural and bioengineered means. Various innovations in these areas have helped combat vascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other chronic diseases. By promoting research in these areas, CIHR and CSA will be moving Canada to the forefront of modern medical research. [emphasis mine]

When was the Space Agency mandated to bring Canada to the “forefront of modern medical research?” I did look at the projects to see if any of them might have a ‘space travel’ component,

This funding will enable researchers to potentially:

# Identify microlesions in multiple sclerosis, using a new tool for quantifying the cause of the disease and how well a treatment is working, Dr. Daniel Côté, Université Laval;

# Create personalized nanomedicines that silence cancer-causing genes, Dr. P[ieter] Cullis, University of British Columbia;

# Develop microchip-based devices to analyze prostate cancer markers in blood, Dr. Shana Kelley, University of Toronto;

# Generate transplantable, insulin-producing cells from stem cells for diabetes, Dr. Timothy Kieffer, University of British Columbia;

# Develop innovative sensorimotor rehabilitation approaches for patients with spinal cord injuries or stroke, Dr. Serge Rossignol, Université de Montréal;

# Study how novel therapeutic interventions can regenerate blood vessels, Dr. Michael Sefton, University of Toronto; and,

# Develop nanotechnology-enabled image-guided methods of diagnosing and treating lung cancer and vascular diseases, Dr. Gang Zheng, University Health Network.

I suppose the project to regenerate blood vessels might have some applications appropriate for space travel/exploration but the rest leave me puzzled. If anyone has an answer or even a guess, please do leave a comment.

ETA March 17, 2011: I found the CSA’s mandate here,

The mandate of the Canadian Space Agency is:

To promote the peaceful use and development of space, to advance the knowledge of space through science and to ensure that space science and technology provide social and economic benefits for Canadians.

Remote-controlled microcarriers and nanorobotics in Québec

They are called therapeutic magnetic microcarriers (TMMC) and they are drug delivery agents which have recently been successfully sent through a living rabbit’s bloodstream to a targeted area for successful administration of a drug. We’re in Fantastic Voyage (for those who don’t know the 1966 movie, it was more notable for then bombshell Raquel Welch’s presence than the science used to shrink a submarine filled with scientists to a microscopic size then injected into a dying diplomat’s bloodstream in an attempt to save his life) territory.

This latest breatkthrough comes from Sylvain Martel’s Nanorobotics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal (Québec, Canada). From the March 16, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Known for being the world’s first researcher to have guided a magnetic sphere through a living artery, Professor Martel is announcing a spectacular new breakthrough in the field of nanomedicine. Using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, his team successfully guided microcarriers loaded with a dose of anti-cancer drug through the bloodstream of a living rabbit, right up to a targeted area in the liver, where the drug was successfully administered. This is a medical first that will help improve chemoembolization, a current treatment for liver cancer.

The therapeutic magnetic microcarriers (TMMCs) were developed by Pierre Pouponneau, a PhD candidate under the joint direction of Professors Jean-Christophe Leroux and Martel. These tiny drug-delivery agents, made from biodegradable polymer and measuring 50 micrometers in diameter — just under the breadth of a hair — encapsulate a dose of a therapeutic agent (in this case, doxorubicin) as well as magnetic nanoparticles. Essentially tiny magnets, the nanoparticles are what allow the upgraded MRI system to guide the microcarriers through the blood vessels to the targeted organ. During the experiments, the TMMCs injected into the bloodstream were guided through the hepatic artery to the targeted part of the liver where the drug was progressively released.

Martel’s work was last highlighted here in my April 6, 2010 posting. At that time he was working with bacteria which he and his team had guided into assembling into pyramid shapes. The team had also guided these bacteria through the bloodstream of a rat.  There’s more about this earlier work with bacteria in a July 28, 2010 article by Monique Roy-Sole on the Innovation Canada website. As you may have guessed from the ‘pyramids’,  Martel’s inspiration for that work came from Egypt,

Martel was inspired by the story of the pyramid of Djoser, built by an estimated 5,000 slaves around 2600 BC, and considered to be the earliest large-scale stone structure known to humankind. He decided to employ 5,000 bacteria in a drop of water as mini workers to construct a similar step pyramid in less than 15 minutes.

As for Martel’s first breakthrough (from Sole’s article),

In 2007, he and researchers from École Polytechnique and the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal successfully injected a tiny magnetic device, measuring 1.5 millimetres in diameter, into the carotid artery of a pig, controlling and tracking its travels in the bloodstream with a clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Since then, Martel and his team have been working at reducing the size of the device so it can circulate in smaller blood vessels. This would allow doctors to diagnose and treat areas of the body that current instruments, such as catheters, cannot reach.

I hope this proves to be successful. As anyone who’s had a family member or friend undergo cancer treatments knows, the procedures and medicines are crude in that they destroy healthy as well as diseased tissue. Hopefully, this kind of work will make the cures less drastic.

Nigeria and nanotechnology

The March 6, 2011 news item on Nanowerk specifically concerns the development of nanomedicine facilities and teaching in Nigerian Universities,

The National Universities Commission (NUC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Institute for Lasers, Photonics, and Biophotonics (ILPB), United States of America for the development of an international joint research centre for nanomedicine in some Nigerian universities.

According to details of the MOU, the first phase of the initiative is to implement the program at NUC-selected universities while the second phase will bring Nigerian researchers to train at ILPB and equipment distributed to Nigerian universities. The MOU postulates that by this time, there should be “global impact of research with widespread implementation of quantum dots and other nanoparticles in the fields of medical diagnosis and treatment.” The third stage, meant to take place five to 10 years from now, will be defined by major research focuses, sufficient funding, and effective personnel training and the centre is expected to become a first-class research center not only in Nigeria, but in the world.

The NUC appointed Paras Prasad, a professor of chemistry and medicine with the University of Buffalo (UB) and the executive director of the ILPB, as the head of the joint research center.

“The two major application areas are alternate energy and health care. We are applying this merge of photonics, of light wave energy, for application in the area of medicine called nanomedicine. The other, alternative energy focuses primarily on solar energy harvesting,” he said.

Despite the reference to alternative energy the primary focus, according to Folarin Erogbogbo, leader of the Nigerian group and research assistant professor in cancer nanotechnology, is nanomedicine.

Handheld diagnostic tool: nanoLAB

There’s a lot more action on the ‘handheld diagnostic equipment and abolish invasive testing’ front than I realized. (In my  Feb. 15, 2011 posting I highlighted the UK’s Argento [physical device and diagnostic tests for athletes] and PROOF [a Canadian group working 0n some new diagnostic tests for kidney patients and others].)

It turns out there’s another device, this one, to be found in the US, is called nanoLAB. From the Feb. 22, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

In 2009, Stanford University faculty member Shan Wang and doctoral students Richard Gaster and Drew Hall demonstrated that they could use the same ultrasensitive magnetic sensors that form the basis of today’s compact, high-capacity disk drives in combination with mass-produced magnetic nanotags to detect small amounts of cancer-associated proteins (click here for earlier story).

Now, in a paper published in the journal Lab on a Chip (“nanoLAB: An ultraportable, handheld diagnostic laboratory for global health”), the three scientists show how they shrunk this technology to create a handheld disease-detection device that any individual should be able to use at home to detect illness and even monitor the effectiveness of anticancer therapy.

In my Feb. 15 posting I wondered about how the samples were actually conveyed to the device. I now know how nanoLab does it, presumably Argento uses a similar approach,

The device, which the researchers have named the nanoLAB, consists of a disposable “stick” that resembles a home pregnancy test, and a handheld magnetic reader that analyzes a patient’s urine, blood, or saliva for the presence of specific disease-associated proteins. In its current design, the nanoLAB can provide simultaneous yes-no answers for up to eight different disease-associated proteins. The handheld sensor unit costs less than $200 to produce, while the sticks capable of making eight measurements cost less than $3.50 each, and could drop to under $1 apiece with improvements already in the works. …

To conduct a test using the nanoLab, a person would add a drop of biological sample – urine or blood, for example – on the stick. They would then add the contents of two premeasured vials to the stick and then wait 15 minutes for results to appear in the form of a lit LED light on the sensor unit.

It’s not quite Star Trek yet but we’re getting there.

Argento, nano, and PROOF

When the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held its 2004 annual meeting in Seattle, I read the abstract for a presentation about making diagnoses from saliva. Although I never did make it to the presentation, I remained fascinated by the idea especially as it seemed to promise the end of blood tests and urine samples.  Well, the end is not quite in sight yet but a handheld diagnostic device that can make a diagnosis from a single sample of blood, urine, or saliva (!) is being made available to elite UK athletes. From the Dec. 9, 2010 news release,

A new hand-held medical device will help UK athletes reach the top of their game when preparing for upcoming sporting competitions. UK Sport, the UK’s high performance sports agency, has reached an agreement to become the first organisation to use cutting edge technology developed by Argento Diagnostics to improve training programmes for athletes.

Elite athletes will be able to monitor various proteins which reveal details about the condition of the body – known as biomarkers – before, during and after training sessions. These biomarkers can give a clear indication of their physical health and the effectiveness of a particular training programme. Everyone reacts differently to training, so understanding how activities affect the body helps ensure that athletes follow the best programmes for them and avoid injury. This is particularly important for elite level athletes, where small changes in fitness can mean the difference between success and failure.

I’m willing to bet that this initiative has something to do with the 2012 Olympic Summer Games being held in London. Still, I’m more interested in the device itself and how nanotechnology enables it (from the news release),

Argento’s portable device uses nanotechnology to analyse the sample. The sample is mixed with silver nanoparticles coated with a binding unit, an antibody, against a specific biological compound, the biomarker, which is indicative of the condition being tested for. If the biomarker is present the silver nanoparticles will stick to magnetic beads with the biomarkers sandwiched in-between.

Magnets pull these compounds into the measurement zone, where the silver nanoparticles are dislodged off, drawn down to the sensor and measured. The number of nanoparticles measured by the sensor will be directly proportional to the expressed amount of biomarker. The device can therefore quickly analyse the biomarker level and, using a computer programme, summarise it in a meaningful way on an on-screen readout.

I did manage to get some more information about the device from Argento’s company website,

For the first time ever, utilising the Argento technology we will be able to offer fully quantitative analysis of multiple analytes from a single sample in a truly portable handheld device which adds the benefits of modern mobile phone, WiFi and Bluetooth technology to store and communicate the results of the tests to maximise the impact and efficiency of testing.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any information about precisely how the samples are conveyed to the device for diagnostic purposes, i.e., do you spit on it, do you sprinkle it with urine, or do you stab yourself and dip the device into your blood? Yes, I suspect that medical professionals will be drawing blood or scraping your mouth with a Q-tip or getting you to donate a urine sample in the usual way and that somehow this sample  is conveyed to the device which will, an unspecified amount of time later, provide a readout. I just wish the people who put together the news release and information materials on the company’s website (BTW, the company is a spin-off from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory) had thought to add these details.

Closer to home, the PROOF (Prevention of Organ Failure) Centre of Excellence, located in Vancouver, Canada, is working on a type of test that could conceivably extend the use of devices such as Argento beyond elite athletes. The PROOF team is working on a test for individuals who have received a transplant.  If you get a new organ such as a kidney, a biopsy is required on a monthly basis for diagnostic purposes. The new PROOF test would be much less invasive, much faster and based on biomarkers, just like the tests that can be run on the Argento device. As far as I understand, the team is currently searching for capital to further develop their biomarker tests.

Nano vaccine patch on the way to commercialization?

Professor Mark Kendall, the Australian scientist heading up the team that’s working on a nanopatch for vaccines without needles, and his team have just won the 2010 Translational Research Excellence Commercialisation Award. From the news item on Nanowerk,

As a consequence of winning the 2010 Translational Research Excellence Commercialisation Award, Professor Kendall will meet senior executives from global pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp and Dohme in the US.

“This is important, as it is a step towards partnering our Nanopatch with one of the world’s leading vaccine companies,” he [Mark Kendall] said.

“Our ambition is for Nanopatch to be taken from the current stage of animal model success through the clinical trials, and on to the market as a next-generation vaccine delivery device, potentially displacing the needle and syringe.

“This progression requires commercialisation and partnership with the right players. This award is an important step along this pathway.”

Nanopatch has been shown in trials to provide a protective immunisation in mice, with less than a hundredth of the dosage used compared to needle and syringe.

A part of the appeal of the Nanopatch is that it is painless, needle-free and is a potential solution for those with needle phobia.

Because the vaccine is formulated in dry form, it is also thermostable, removing the need for refrigeration.

Nanopatch is smaller than a postage stamp and is dissolvable, eliminating the possibility of needle-stick injury.

Congratulations, again. (The nanopatch was last mentioned here in my July 26, 2010 posting.)

Teaching nanotechnology in 2nd Life

I’m not sure if this is “applying nanotechnology to health problems” or if it’s nanomedicine but that’s what Ananth Annapragada, Ph.D., holder of the Robert H. Graham Professorship of Entrepreneurial Biomedical Informatics and Bioengineering at the University of Texas (UT) Health School of Biomedical Informatics and fellow at the IC² Institute, an interdisciplinary research unit of The University of Texas at Austi (also on the faculty of the UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and UT Austin Department of Biomedical Engineering [that’s a lot of job titles]), is teaching distance education students via 2nd Life.

From the news item on Nanowerk,

When he is not teaching students how to apply nanotechnology to health problems, Annapragada is building miniaturized drug delivery systems engineered to ferry agents through the bloodstream to specific targets. His nanocarriers are so small they are measured in billionths of a meter.

“It was a leap of faith to see if this would work,” said Annapragada, who is making his teaching debut in Second Life. “I’m getting the equivalent if not better class participation.”

Annapragada likes the fact that he can gather students from different locations in the same virtual classroom at the same time. “Everyone gets the same learning experience,” he said. “It reduces a geographically-distributed student group to the same interactive common denominator.”

Beginning the three-hour class with a short lecture, he then divides students into work groups. During the next hour or so, he “turns the students loose” to work on a nano problem. He normally concludes with a lecture.

Targeted drug delivery is a hot topic in nanomedicine and was the subject of a recent class. When medicine is injected into the bloodstream, often relatively little reaches its intended target.

One nano solution being researched by Annapragada and others in the field involves packaging drugs in tiny carriers designed to bind to diseased cells. It requires extensive knowledge of the interaction between the substances on the surfaces of both the drug carrier and the diseased cell.

The students’ nano problem that day was to develop a nanocarrier for targeting brain tumors. Their homework was to come up with the specifics.

There are students from UTHealth, UT Austin, Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. Their degree programs include biology, biomedical engineering and physics. Some are enrolled in the Nanobiology Interdisciplinary Graduate Training Program operated by the Gulf Coast Consortia. There are 25 in the class.

“This is the only nanomedicine course in the UT System that I’m aware of,” Annapragada said. “It’s appropriate that I’m using the novel methodology of Second Life. Nanomedicine is an evolving field. There is no textbook. We are writing the textbook as we go.”

I heard a presentation by Dr. DeNel Rehberg Sedo about teaching in a 2nd Life classroom at a 2007 conference for the Association of Internet Researchers. Contrary to expectations, for the most part her students in Nova Scotia (Canada) at Mount St. Vincent University did not take to 2nd Life easily nor were they were particularly enthused about the experience.

There are a number of possibilities as to why that may have been the case. (1) The students were studying communication and/or public relations programmes; subjects which may not lend themselves easily to a virtual classroom.  (2) The year 2007 would represent fairly early adoption of a new technology for the classroom  (Brava DeNel! and students!) and early adoption is always littered with setbacks and problems as students and instructors “write the textbook as they go.” (3) Students in 2007 may not have had sufficiently powerful systems for the 2nd Life environment. (I was in a student programme and found that while I had a system that was the minimum required for 2nd Life participation, the minimum just wasn’t good enough.)

Another early adopter of 2nd Life was the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. They featured a nanotechnology outreach project, Nanolands which was in part designed by Troy McConaghy, a Canadian who amongst other activities produces science exhibits in 2nd Life. (my Sept. 3 2008 interview with Troy)

I find these bits of news and information intriguing as I am fascinated by the increasing inroads that new media and social media are making into how science and technology are communicated and discussed.

Tony Clement announces Canadian government nano investment in two Alberta firms

Tony Clement, Canada’s Minister of Industry, announced investments totaling over $500,000 to two Alberta-based firms associated with nanotechnology. From the news release on Marketwire [ETA Aug.18.10: there’s also this link to the item on Nanowerk],

The Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, today announced contributions of $285,268 to Sonoro Energy Limited and $257,000 to IntelligentNano Incorporated from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP). The funding supports innovative research and development projects that will assist both firms in developing high-tech solutions for global markets.

“Our government is investing in science and technology to create good jobs, strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life of Canadians,” said Minister Clement. “This government is supporting Canadian firms that successfully develop and apply innovative technologies. Canada’s Economic Action Plan is bolstering scientific research and commercialization, while creating good jobs and economic growth.”

Edmonton boasts Canada’s largest and most technologically advanced nanotechnology research infrastructure, centred around the National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT). NINT is a joint initiative between the National Research Council of Canada, the University of Alberta, and the Government of Alberta.

So there you have it, the follow up to yesterday’s news flash. If you’re curious about the two companies, Sonoro is using the money to,

[support] a project that will seek to accelerate the commercial upgrading of heavy oil into synthetic crude, by small and medium- sized producers in remote areas. As the technology is both scalable and repeatable, Sonoro is actively pursuing heavy oil resource opportunities, particularly in remote global regions where there is heavy oil that could benefit from low-cost upgrading technology. Sonoro Energy has developed and patented a proprietary sonic reactor technology platform that transfers sonic energy on an industrial scale to physical, chemical or biological processes.

IntelligentNano will apply its funds towards,

further development of the “Sonacell,” a device for amplifying and accelerating the growth of therapeutic stem cells. Stem cells have an ability to self-renew and the potential to replace diseased and damaged tissues in the body, without the risk of rejection and side effects. Adults have a very small number of such cells; IntelligentNano has developed the “Sonacell,” which will make it possible to harvest and grow a sufficient quantity of a patient’s own stem cells for use in medical therapies. The “Sonacell” opens the door to the possibility of treatments for diseases like diabetes, arthritis, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries.