Tag Archives: Weibo Cai

Harvesting bioenergy to cure wounds and control weight

I’m always a sucker for bioenergy harvesting stories but this is the first time I’ve seen research on the topic which combines weight control with wound healing. From a January 17, 2019 news item on Nanowerk,


Although electrical stimulation has therapeutic potential for various disorders and conditions, ungainly power sources have hampered practical applications. Now bioengineers have developed implantable and wearable nanogenerators from special materials that create electrical pulses when compressed by body motions. The pulses controlled weight gain and enhanced healing of skin wounds in rat models.

The work was performed by a research team led by Xudong Wang, Ph.D., Professor of Material Sciences and Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and supported by the [US Dept. of Health, National Institutes of Health] National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB).

A January 17, 2019 NIBIB news release, which originated the news item, provides more technical information (Note: Links have been removed),

The researchers used what are known as piezoelectric and dielectric materials, including ceramics and crystals, which have a special property of creating an electrical charge in response to mechanical stress.

“Wang and colleagues have engineered solutions to a number of technical hurdles to create piezoelectric and dielectric materials that are compatible with body tissues and can generate a reliable, self-sufficient power supply. Their meticulous work has enabled a simple and elegant technology that offers the possibility of developing electrical stimulation therapies for a number of major diseases that currently lack adequate treatments,” explained David Rampulla, Ph.D., director of the Program in Biomaterials and Biomolecular Constructs at NIBIB

Shedding weight by curbing appetite

Worldwide, more than 700 million people — over 100 million of them children — are obese, causing health problems such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and certain cancers. In 2015 approximately four million people died of obesity-related causes1.

To address this crisis, Wang and his colleagues developed a vagal nerve stimulator (VNS) that dramatically improves appetite suppression through electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve. The approach is a promising one that has previously not proven practical because patients must carry bulky battery packs that require proper programming, and frequent recharging

The VNS consists of a small patch, about the size of a fingernail, which carries tiny devices called nanogenerators. Minimally invasive surgery was used to attach the VNS to the stomachs of rats. The rat’s stomach movements resulted in the delivery of gentle electrical pulses to the vagus nerve, which links the brain to the stomach. With the VNS, when the stomach moved in response to eating, the electric signal told the brain that the stomach was full, even if only a small amount of food was consumed.

The device curbed the rat’s appetite and reduced body weight by a remarkable 40 percent. “The stimulation is a natural response to regulate food intake, so there are no unwanted side effects,” explained Wang. When the device was removed the rats resumed their normal eating patterns and their weight returned to pre-treatment levels.

“Given the simplicity and effectiveness of the system, coupled with the fact that the effect is reversible and carries no side-effects, we are now planning testing in larger animals with the hope of eventually moving into human trials,” said Wang.

Accelerating wound healing

In another NIBIB-funded study in a rat experimental model, the researchers used their nanogenerator technology to determine whether electrical stimulation would accelerate healing of wounds on the skin surface.

For this experiment, a band of nanogenerators was placed around the rat’s chest, where the expansion from breathing created a mild electric field. Small electrodes in a bandage-like device were placed over skin wounds on the rat’s back, where they directed the electric field to cover the wound area.

The technique reduced healing times to just three days compared with nearly two weeks for the normal healing process.

Similar to the case with appetite suppression, it was known that electricity could enhance wound healing, but the devices that had been developed were large and impractical. The nanogenerator-powered bandage is completely non-invasive and produced a mild electric field that is similar to electrical activity detected in the normal wound-healing process.

The researchers observed electrical activation of normal cellular healing processes that included the movement of healthy skin fibroblasts into the wound, accompanied by the release of biochemical factors that promote the growth of the fibroblasts and other cell types that expand to repair the wound space.

“The dramatic decrease in healing time was surprising,” said Wang, “We now plan to test the device on pigs because their skin is very similar to humans.” 

The team believes the simplicity of the electric bandage will help move the technology to human trials quickly. In addition, Wang explained that the fabrication of the device is very inexpensive and a product for human use would cost about the same as a normal bandage.

The experiments on appetite suppression were reported in the December issue of Nature Communications2. The wound-healing studies were reported in the December issue of ACS Nano3. Both studies were supported by grant EB021336 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and grant CA014520 from the National Cancer Institute.

Here are links to and citations for the papers,

Effective weight control via an implanted self-powered vagus nerve stimulation device by Guang Yao, Lei Kang, Jun Li, Yin Long, Hao Wei, Carolina A. Ferreira, Justin J. Jeffery, Yuan Lin, Weibo Cai & Xudong Wang. Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 5349 (2018) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07764-z Published 17 December 2018

Effective Wound Healing Enabled by Discrete Alternative Electric Fields from Wearable Nanogenerators by Yin Long, Hao Wei, Jun Li, Guang Yao, Bo Yu, Dalong Ni, Angela LF Gibson, Xiaoli Lan, Yadong Jiang, Weibo Cai, and Xudong Wang. ACS Nano, 2018, 12 (12), pp 12533–12540 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b07038 Publication Date (Web): November 29, 2018

Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society

Both papers are open access.

Bandage with nanogenerator promotes healing

This bandage not only heals wounds (on rats) much faster; it’s cheap, according to a November 29, 2018 news item on Nanowerk,

A new, low-cost wound dressing developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers could dramatically speed up healing in a surprising way.

The method leverages energy generated from a patient’s own body motions to apply gentle electrical pulses at the site of an injury.

In rodent tests, the dressings reduced healing times to a mere three days compared to nearly two weeks for the normal healing process.

“We were surprised to see such a fast recovery rate,” says Xudong Wang, a professor of materials science and engineering at UW-Madison. “We suspected that the devices would produce some effect, but the magnitude was much more than we expected.”

A November 29, 2018 University of Wisconsin-Madison news release (also on EurekAlert) by Sam Million-Weaver, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

Researchers have known for several decades that electricity can be beneficial for skin healing, but most electrotherapy units in use today require bulky electrical equipment and complicated wiring to deliver powerful jolts of electricity.

“Acute and chronic wounds represent a substantial burden in healthcare worldwide,” says collaborator Angela Gibson, professor of surgery at UW-Madison and a burn surgeon and director of wound healing services at UW Health. “The use of electrical stimulation in wound healing is uncommon.”

In contrast with existing methods, the new dressing is much more straightforward.

“Our device is as convenient as a bandage you put on your skin,” says Wang.

The new dressings consist of small electrodes for the injury site that are linked to a band holding energy-harvesting units called nanogenerators, which are looped around a wearer’s torso. The natural expansion and contraction of the wearer’s ribcage during breathing powers the nanogenerators, which deliver low-intensity electric pulses.

“The nature of these electrical pulses is similar to the way the body generates an internal electric field,” says Wang.

And, those low-power pulses won’t harm healthy tissue like traditional, high-power electrotherapy devices might.

In fact, the researchers showed that exposing cells to high-energy electrical pulses caused them to produce almost five times more reactive oxygen species — major risk factors for cancer and cellular aging — than did cells that were exposed to the nanogenerators.

Also a boon to healing: They determined that the low-power pulses boosted viability for a type of skin cell called fibroblasts, and exposure to the nanogenerator’s pulses encouraged fibroblasts to line up (a crucial step in wound healing) and produce more biochemical substances that promote tissue growth.

“These findings are very exciting,” says collaborator Weibo Cai, a professor of radiology at UW-Madison. “The detailed mechanisms will still need to be elucidated in future work.”

In that vein, the researchers aim to tease out precisely how the gentle pulses aid in healing. The scientists also plan to test the devices on pig skin, which closely mimics human tissue.

And, they are working to give the nanogenerators additional capabilities–tweaking their structure to allow for energy harvesting from small imperceptible twitches in the skin or the thrumming pulse of a heartbeat.

“The impressive results in this study represent an exciting new spin on electrical stimulation for many different wound types, given the simplicity of the design,” says Gibson, who will collaborate with the team to confirm the reproducibility of these results in human skin models.

If the team is successful, the devices could help solve a major challenge for modern medicine.

“We think our nanogenerator could be the most effective electrical stimulation approach for many therapeutic purposes,” says Wang.

And because the nanogenerators consist of relatively common materials, price won’t be an issue.

“I don’t think the cost will be much more than a regular bandage,” says Wang. “The device in itself is very simple and convenient to fabricate.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Effective Wound Healing Enabled by Discrete Alternative Electric Fields from Wearable Nanogenerators by Yin Long, Hao Wei, Jun Li, Guang Yao, Bo Yu, Dalong Ni, Angela LF Gibson, Xiaoli Lan, Yadong Jiang, Weibo Cai, and Xudong Wang. ACS Nano, Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b07038 Publication Date (Web): November 29, 2018

Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society

This paper is open access.

I assume it will be a while before there are human clinical trials.

Better bioimaging accuracy with direct radiolabeling of nanomaterials

Even I can tell the image is improved when the chelator is omitted,

Courtesy: Wiley

A Feb. 9, 2017 news item on phys.org describes a new, chelator-free technique for increased bioimaging accuracy,

Positron emission tomography (PET) plays a pivotal role for monitoring the distribution and accumulation of radiolabeled nanomaterials in living subjects. The radioactive metals are usually connected to the nanomaterial through an anchor, a so-called chelator, but this chemical binding can be omitted if nanographene is used, as American scientists report in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The replacement of chelator-based labeling by intrinsic labeling significantly enhances the bioimaging accuracy and reduces biases.

A Feb 9, 2017Wiley press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more detail,

Nanoparticles are very promising substances for biodiagnostics (e.g., detecting cancerous tissue) and biotherapy (e.g., destroying tumors by molecular agents), because they are not as fast [sic] metabolized as normal pharmaceuticals and they particularly enrich [sic] in tumors through an effect called enhanced permeability and retention (EPR). Chelators, which have a macrocyclic structure, are used to anchor the radioactive element (e.g., copper-64) onto the nanoparticles’ surface. The tracers are then detected and localized in the body with the help of a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. However, the use of a chelator can also be problematic, because it can detach from the nanoparticles or bias the imaging. Therefore, the group of Weibo Cai at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, sought for chelator-free solutions—and found it in nanographene, one of the most promising substances in nanotechnology.

Nanographene offers the electronic system to provide special binding electrons for some transition metal ions. “π bonds of nanographene are able to provide the additional electron to stably incorporate the 64Cu2+ acceptor ions onto the surface of graphene,” the authors wrote. Thus, it was possible to directly and stably attach the copper isotope to reduced graphene oxide nanomaterials stabilized by poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), and this system was used for several bioimaging tests including the detection of tumors in mice.

After injection in the mouse model, the scientists observed long blood circulation and high tumor uptake. “Prolonged blood circulation of 64Cu-RGO-PEG […] induced a prompt and persistent tumor uptake via EPR effect,” they wrote. Moreover, the directly radiolabeled nanographene was readily prepared by simply mixing both components and heating them. This simple chelator-free, intrinsically labeled system may provide an attractive alternative to the chelator-based radiolabeling, which is still the “gold standard” in bioimaging.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Chelator-Free Radiolabeling of Nanographene: Breaking the Stereotype of Chelation by Sixiang Shi, Cheng Xu, Dr. Kai Yang, Shreya Goel, Hector F. Valdovinos, Dr. Haiming Luo, Emily B. Ehlerding, Dr. Christopher G. England, Dr. Liang Cheng, Dr. Feng Chen, Prof. Robert J. Nickles, Prof. Zhuang Liu, and Prof. Weibo Cai. Angewandte Chemie International Edition DOI: 10.1002/anie.201610649 Version of Record online: 7 FEB 2017

© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

Drink your spinach juice—illuminate your guts

Contrast agents used for magnetic resonance imaging, x-ray imaging, ultrasounds, and other imaging technologies are not always kind to the humans ingesting them. So, scientists at the University at Buffalo (also known as the State University of New York at Buffalo) have developed a veggie juice that does the job according to a July 11, 2016 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

The pigment that gives spinach and other plants their verdant color may improve doctors’ ability to examine the human gastrointestinal tract.

That’s according to a study, published in the journal Advanced Materials (“Surfactant-Stripped Frozen Pheophytin Micelles for Multimodal Gut Imaging”), which describes how chlorophyll-based nanoparticles suspended in liquid are an effective imaging agent for the gut.

The University of Buffalo has provided an illustration of the work,

A new UB-led study suggests that chlorophyll-based nanoparticles are an effective imaging agent for the gut. The medical imaging drink, developed to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal illnesses, is made of concentrated chlorophyll, the pigment that makes spinach green. Photo illustration credit: University at Buffalo.

A new UB-led study suggests that chlorophyll-based nanoparticles are an effective imaging agent for the gut. The medical imaging drink, developed to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal illnesses, is made of concentrated chlorophyll, the pigment that makes spinach green. Photo illustration credit: University at Buffalo.

A July 11, 2016 University at Buffalo (UB) news release (also on EurekAlert) by Cory Nealon, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

“Our work suggests that this spinach-like, nanoparticle juice can help doctors get a better look at what’s happening inside the stomach, intestines and other areas of the GI tract,” says Jonathan Lovell, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program between UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, and the study’s corresponding author.

To examine the gastrointestinal tract, doctors typically use X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasounds, but these techniques are limited with respect to safety, accessibility and lack of adequate contrast, respectively.

Doctors also perform endoscopies, in which a tiny camera attached to a thin tube is inserted into the patient’s body. While effective, this procedure is challenging to perform in the small intestine, and it can cause infections, tears and pose other risks.

The new study, which builds upon Lovell’s previous medical imaging research, is a collaboration between researchers at UB and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It focuses on Chlorophyll a, a pigment found in spinach and other green vegetables that is essential to photosynthesis.

In the laboratory, researchers removed magnesium from Chlorophyll a, a process which alters the pigment’s chemical structure to form another edible compound called pheophytin. Pheophytin plays an important role in photosynthesis, acting as a gatekeeper that allows electrons from sunlight to enter plants.

Next, they dissolved pheophytin in a solution of soapy substances known as surfactants. The researchers were then able to remove nearly all of the surfactants, leaving nearly pure pheophytin nanoparticles.

The drink, when tested in mice, provided imaging of the gut in three modes: photoacoustic imaging, fluorescence imaging and positron emission tomography (PET). (For PET, the researchers added to the drink Copper-64, an isotope of the metal that, in small amounts, is harmless to the human body.)

Additional studies are needed, but the drink has commercial potential because it:

·         Works in different imaging techniques.

·         Moves stably through the gut.

·         And is naturally consumed in the human diet already.

In lab tests, mice excreted 100 percent of the drink in photoacoustic and fluorescence imaging, and nearly 93 percent after the PET test.

“The veggie juice allows for techniques that are not commonly used today by doctors for imaging the gut like photoacoustic, PET, and fluorescence,” Lovell says. “And part of the appeal is the safety of the juice.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Surfactant-Stripped Frozen Pheophytin Micelles for Multimodal Gut Imaging by Yumiao Zhang, Depeng Wang, Shreya Goel, Boyang Sun, Upendra Chitgupi, Jumin Geng, Haiyan Sun, Todd E. Barnhart, Weibo Cai, Jun Xia, and Jonathan F. Lovell. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201602373 Version of Record online: 11 JUL 2016

© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

A nanoparticle for a medical imaging machine that doesn’t exist yet

Researchers at the University of Buffalo (New York state) have created a nanoparticle that can be detected by six imaging devices according to a Jan. 20, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily,

It’s technology so advanced that the machine capable of using it doesn’t yet exist.

Using two biocompatible parts, University at Buffalo researchers and their colleagues have designed a nanoparticle that can be detected by six medical imaging techniques:

• computed tomography (CT) scanning;

• positron emission tomography (PET) scanning;

• photoacoustic imaging;

• fluorescence imaging;

• upconversion imaging; and

• Cerenkov luminescence imaging.

The advantages are obvious should somebody, somewhere create a hexamodal (aka, multimodal, aka hypmodal) sensing device capable of exploiting the advantages of this nanoparticle as the researchers hope.

A Jan. 20, 2015 University of Buffalo news release (also on EurekAlert) by Charlotte Hsu, which originated the news item, describes the ideas underlying the research,

This kind of “hypermodal” imaging — if it came to fruition — would give doctors a much clearer picture of patients’ organs and tissues than a single method alone could provide. It could help medical professionals diagnose disease and identify the boundaries of tumors.

“This nanoparticle may open the door for new ‘hypermodal’ imaging systems that allow a lot of new information to be obtained using just one contrast agent,” says researcher Jonathan Lovell, PhD, UB assistant professor of biomedical engineering. “Once such systems are developed, a patient could theoretically go in for one scan with one machine instead of multiple scans with multiple machines.”

When Lovell and colleagues used the nanoparticles to examine the lymph nodes of mice, they found that CT and PET scans provided the deepest tissue penetration, while the photoacoustic imaging showed blood vessel details that the first two techniques missed.

Differences like these mean doctors can get a much clearer picture of what’s happening inside the body by merging the results of multiple modalities.

A machine capable of performing all six imaging techniques at once has not yet been invented, to Lovell’s knowledge, but he and his coauthors hope that discoveries like theirs will spur development of such technology.

The news release also offers a description of the nanoparticles,

The researchers designed the nanoparticles from two components: An “upconversion” core that glows blue when struck by near-infrared light, and an outer fabric of porphyrin-phospholipids (PoP) that wraps around the core.

Each part has unique characteristics that make it ideal for certain types of imaging.

The core, initially designed for upconversion imaging, is made from sodium, ytterbium, fluorine, yttrium and thulium. The ytterbium is dense in electrons — a property that facilitates detection by CT scans.

The PoP wrapper has biophotonic qualities that make it a great match for fluorescence and photoacoustic imagining. The PoP layer also is adept at attracting copper, which is used in PET and Cerenkov luminescence imaging.

“Combining these two biocompatible components into a single nanoparticle could give tomorrow’s doctors a powerful, new tool for medical imaging,” says Prasad, also a SUNY Distinguished Professor of chemistry, physics, medicine and electrical engineering at UB. “More studies would have to be done to determine whether the nanoparticle is safe to use for such purposes, but it does not contain toxic metals such as cadmium that are known to pose potential risks and found in some other nanoparticles.”

“Another advantage of this core/shell imaging contrast agent is that it could enable biomedical imaging at multiple scales, from single-molecule to cell imaging, as well as from vascular and organ imaging to whole-body bioimaging,” Chen adds. “These broad, potential capabilities are due to a plurality of optical, photoacoustic and radionuclide imaging abilities that the agent possesses.”

Lovell says the next step in the research is to explore additional uses for the technology.

For example, it might be possible to attach a targeting molecule to the PoP surface that would enable cancer cells to take up the particles, something that photoacoustic and fluorescence imaging can detect due to the properties of the smart PoP coating. This would enable doctors to better see where tumors begin and end, Lovell says.

The researchers have provided two images,

This transmission electron microscopy image shows the nanoparticles, which consist of a core that glows blue when struck by near-infrared light, and an outer fabric of porphyrin-phospholipids (PoP) that wraps around the core. Credit: Jonathan Lovell

This transmission electron microscopy image shows the nanoparticles, which consist of a core that glows blue when struck by near-infrared light, and an outer fabric of porphyrin-phospholipids (PoP) that wraps around the core.
Credit: Jonathan Lovell

University at Buffalo researchers and colleagues have designed a nanoparticle detectable by six medical imaging techniques. This illustration depicts the particles as they are struck by beams of energy and emit signals that can be detected by the six methods: CT and PET scanning, along with photoacoustic, fluorescence, upconversion and Cerenkov luminescence imaging. Credit: Jonathan Lovell

University at Buffalo researchers and colleagues have designed a nanoparticle detectable by six medical imaging techniques. This illustration depicts the particles as they are struck by beams of energy and emit signals that can be detected by the six methods: CT and PET scanning, along with photoacoustic, fluorescence, upconversion and Cerenkov luminescence imaging.
Credit: Jonathan Lovell

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Hexamodal Imaging with Porphyrin-Phospholipid-Coated Upconversion Nanoparticles by James Rieffel, Feng Chen, Jeesu Kim, Guanying Chen, Wei Shao, Shuai Shao, Upendra Chitgupi, Reinier Hernandez, Stephen A. Graves, Robert J. Nickles, Paras N. Prasad, Chulhong Kim, Weibo Cai, and Jonathan F. Lovell. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201404739 Article first published online: 14 JAN 2015

© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This article is behind a paywall.

Nanojuice in your gut

A July 7, 2014 news item on Azonano features a new technique that could help doctors better diagnose problems in the intestines (guts),

Located deep in the human gut, the small intestine is not easy to examine. X-rays, MRIs and ultrasound images provide snapshots but each suffers limitations. Help is on the way.

University at Buffalo [State University of New York] researchers are developing a new imaging technique involving nanoparticles suspended in liquid to form “nanojuice” that patients would drink. Upon reaching the small intestine, doctors would strike the nanoparticles with a harmless laser light, providing an unparalleled, non-invasive, real-time view of the organ.

A July 5, 2014 University of Buffalo news release (also on EurekAlert) by Cory Nealon, which originated the news item, describes some of the challenges associated with medical imaging of small intestines,

“Conventional imaging methods show the organ and blockages, but this method allows you to see how the small intestine operates in real time,” said corresponding author Jonathan Lovell, PhD, UB assistant professor of biomedical engineering. “Better imaging will improve our understanding of these diseases and allow doctors to more effectively care for people suffering from them.”

The average human small intestine is roughly 23 feet long and 1 inch thick. Sandwiched between the stomach and large intestine, it is where much of the digestion and absorption of food takes place. It is also where symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease and other gastrointestinal illnesses occur.

To assess the organ, doctors typically require patients to drink a thick, chalky liquid called barium. Doctors then use X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasounds to assess the organ, but these techniques are limited with respect to safety, accessibility and lack of adequate contrast, respectively.

Also, none are highly effective at providing real-time imaging of movement such as peristalsis, which is the contraction of muscles that propels food through the small intestine. Dysfunction of these movements may be linked to the previously mentioned illnesses, as well as side effects of thyroid disorders, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

The news release goes on to describe how the researchers manipulated dyes that are usually unsuitable for the purpose of imaging an organ in the body,

Lovell and a team of researchers worked with a family of dyes called naphthalcyanines. These small molecules absorb large portions of light in the near-infrared spectrum, which is the ideal range for biological contrast agents.

They are unsuitable for the human body, however, because they don’t disperse in liquid and they can be absorbed from the intestine into the blood stream.

To address these problems, the researchers formed nanoparticles called “nanonaps” that contain the colorful dye molecules and added the abilities to disperse in liquid and move safely through the intestine.

In laboratory experiments performed with mice, the researchers administered the nanojuice orally. They then used photoacoustic tomography (PAT), which is pulsed laser lights that generate pressure waves that, when measured, provide a real-time and more nuanced view of the small intestine.

The researchers plan to continue to refine the technique for human trials, and move into other areas of the gastrointestinal tract.

Here’s an image of the nanojuice in the guts of a mouse,

The combination of "nanojuice" and photoacoustic tomography illuminates the intestine of a mouse. (Credit: Jonathan Lovell)

The combination of “nanojuice” and photoacoustic tomography illuminates the intestine of a mouse. (Credit: Jonathan Lovell)

This is an international collaboration both from a research perspective and a funding perspective (from the news release),

Additional authors of the study come from UB’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea, Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and McMaster University in Canada.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Non-invasive multimodal functional imaging of the intestine with frozen micellar naphthalocyanines by Yumiao Zhang, Mansik Jeon, Laurie J. Rich, Hao Hong, Jumin Geng, Yin Zhang, Sixiang Shi, Todd E. Barnhart, Paschalis Alexandridis, Jan D. Huizinga, Mukund Seshadri, Weibo Cai, Chulhong Kim, & Jonathan F. Lovell. Nature Nanotechnology (2014) doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.130 Published online 06 July 2014

This paper is behind a paywall.