Tag Archives: Yang Song

Nanoflowers for better drug delivery; researchers looking for commercial partners

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Caption: Schematic representation of the movement of the flower-like particle as it makes its way through a cellular trap to deliver therapeutic genes. Credit: WSU [Washington State University]

It looks more like a swimming pool with pool toys to me but I imagine that nobody wants to say that they’re sending ‘pool toys’ through your bloodstream. Nanoflowers or flower-shaped nanoparticles sounds nicer.

From a January 10, 2019 news item on Nanowerk,

Washington State University [WSU] researchers have developed a novel way to deliver drugs and therapies into cells at the nanoscale without causing toxic effects that have stymied other such efforts.

The work could someday lead to more effective therapies and diagnostics for cancer and other illnesses.

Led by Yuehe Lin, professor in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and Chunlong Chen, senior scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the research team developed biologically inspired materials at the nanoscale that were able to effectively deliver model therapeutic genes into tumor cells. …

A January 10, 2019 WSU news release (also on EurekAlert) by Tina Hilding, which originated the news item, describes the work in greater detail,

Researchers have been working to develop nanomaterials that can effectively carry therapeutic genes directly into the cells for the treatment of diseases such as cancer. The key issues for gene delivery using nanomaterials are their low delivery efficiency of medicine and potential toxicity.

“To develop nanotechnology for medical purposes, the first thing to consider is toxicity — That is the first concern for doctors,” said Lin.

The flower-like particle the WSU and PNNL team developed is about 150 nanometers in size, or about one thousand times smaller than the width of a piece of paper. It is made of sheets of peptoids, which are similar to natural peptides that make up proteins. The peptoids make for a good drug delivery particle because they’re fairly easy to synthesize and, because they’re similar to natural biological materials, work well in biological systems.

The researchers added fluorescent probes in their peptoid nanoflowers, so they could trace them as they made their way through cells, and they added the element fluorine, which helped the nanoflowers more easily escape from tricky cellular traps that often impede drug delivery.

The flower-like particles loaded with therapeutic genes were able to make their way smoothly out of the predicted cellular trap, enter the heart of the cell, and release their drug there.

“The nanoflowers successfully and rapidly escaped (the cell trap) and exhibited minimal cytotoxicity,” said Lin.

After their initial testing with model drug molecules, the researchers hope to conduct further studies using real medicines.

“This paves a new way for us to develop nanocargoes that can efficiently deliver drug molecules into the cell and offers new opportunities for targeted gene therapies,” he said.

The WSU and PNNL team have filed a patent application for the new technology, and they are seeking industrial partners for further development.

Should you and your company be interested in partnering with the researchers, contact:

  • Yuehe Lin, professor, School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, 509‑335‑8523, yuehe.lin@wsu.edu
  • Tina Hilding, communications director, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, 509‑335‑5095, thilding@wsu.edu

For those who’d like more information, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Efficient Cytosolic Delivery Using Crystalline Nanoflowers Assembled from Fluorinated Peptoids by Yang Song, Mingming Wang, Suiqiong Li, Haibao Jin, Xiaoli Cai, Dan Du, He Li, Chun‐Long Chen, Yuehe Lin. Small DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201803544 First published: 22 November 2018

This paper is behind a paywall.

Nano-spike catalysts offer one step conversion of carbon dioxide to ethanol

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An Oct. 12, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily makes an exciting announcement, if carbon-dixoide-conversion-to-fuel is one of your pet topics,

In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL] have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous.

An Oct. 12, 2016 ORNL news release, which originated the news item, explains in greater detail,

“We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked,” said ORNL’s Adam Rondinone, lead author of the team’s study published in ChemistrySelect. “We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realized that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own.”

The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts.

“We’re taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we’re pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel,” Rondinone said. “Ethanol was a surprise — it’s extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst.”

The catalyst’s novelty lies in its nanoscale structure, consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in carbon spikes. This nano-texturing approach avoids the use of expensive or rare metals such as platinum that limit the economic viability of many catalysts.

“By using common materials, but arranging them with nanotechnology, we figured out how to limit the side reactions and end up with the one thing that we want,” Rondinone said.

The researchers’ initial analysis suggests that the spiky textured surface of the catalysts provides ample reactive sites to facilitate the carbon dioxide-to-ethanol conversion.

“They are like 50-nanometer lightning rods that concentrate electrochemical reactivity at the tip of the spike,” Rondinone said.

Given the technique’s reliance on low-cost materials and an ability to operate at room temperature in water, the researchers believe the approach could be scaled up for industrially relevant applications. For instance, the process could be used to store excess electricity generated from variable power sources such as wind and solar.

“A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it’s available to make and store as ethanol,” Rondinone said. “This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources.”

The researchers plan to refine their approach to improve the overall production rate and further study the catalyst’s properties and behavior.

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

High-Selectivity Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Ethanol using a Copper Nanoparticle/N-Doped Graphene Electrode by Yang Song, Rui Peng, Dale Hensley, Peter Bonnesen, Liangbo Liang, Zili Wu, Harry Meyer III, Miaofang Chi, Cheng Ma, Bobby Sumpter and Adam Rondinone. Chemistry Select DOI: 10.1002/slct.201601169 First published: 28 September 2016

This paper is open access.