Tag Archives: Lori West

Globe and Mail discovers nanomedicine

Business writer, Nick Rockel, has an October 4, 2011 article titled, Nano-technology [sic] coming to the doctor’s office, in The Globe and Mail newspaper. Dr. Jillian Buriak and her colleague, Dr.Lori West (my latest posting about their work was April 28, 2011) were heavily featured in it. From the Oct. 4, 2011 article in The Globe and Mail,

One of Dr. Buriak’s key collaborators on the transplantation project is Lori West, a U of A [University of Alberta] professor of pediatrics, surgery and immunology. Dr. West, a renowned cardiac transplant expert, is known for her discovery that children younger than two will not reject a heart from a donor with a different blood type.

That’s because the immune system is still developing during infancy. Even more remarkably, if a baby with Type A blood gets a Type B heart, it will develop a lifelong tolerance for B and AB blood.

The U of A team “functionalized” so-called stealth nano-particles with the antigens, or markers, that blood cells use to recognize each other. In animal tests, it introduced these particles into the bloodstream in an attempt to teach the body to tolerate every blood type.

Dr. Buriak, who hopes to move to more advanced models by 2015, says the nano-particles could eventually join the standard set of shots that children receive. “Later, if you ever had to have an organ transplant or a transfusion, you wouldn’t have to wait for the right one – you could just take any of them.”

Buriak’s and West’s strategy for avoiding organ rejection contrasts with the strategy used by a joint (Swedish/UK/US) team, which I featured in an August 2, 2011 posting about their work transplanting a synthetic windpipe coated with stem cells harvested from the patient receiving the new organ.

Rockel’s article goes on to provide descriptions of other nanomedicine initiatives (a mix of Canadian- and US-based projects). He employs the usual ‘war against disease’ rhetorical style common to articles about any kind of medicine even when he’s including a ‘kinder, gentler’ quote such as,

People keep asking when her field will deliver a killer app like the cure for cancer, Dr. Buriak says. “But what nanotechnology has done more than anything else is bring people together who normally would never talk to each other,” she explains. [emphases mine]

As one would expect from a business writer, the article concludes with a list of three commercially available nanomedicne products. I wish Rockel had stated whether or not he’s done additional research into these products since this list is culled from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) database. As I’ve noted before (my July 26, 2011 posting) there is no oversight provided by PEN nor does the organization require any description of how the product is nanotechnology-enable, as they openly admit.

I’m glad to see more coverage of nanotechnology and that writers from many specialties are learning about it. As for why I described Nick Rockel as a business writer, here’s his description of his work,

Market forces are one thing, but you can’t force somebody to read about the markets. Nick Rockel helps you connect with your audience. A veteran writer and editor, Nick knows how to grab people’s attention by giving them access to the financial and investment world. Whether it’s hedge funds or herding behaviour, he presents complex subjects in clear and simple terms, without any jargon or bafflegab. Most important, Nick finds the story behind the numbers and makes it resonate with readers.

He advertizes himself as providing Financial Wrting, Editing & Research.

Alberta researchers at the National Institute of Nanotechnology create nano coating for stainless steel implants in bid to trick body’s immune system

A research team in Alberta has found a way to coat stainless steel with glass silica and carbohydrates so the metal (already in general use) can be more effective in implanted biomedical devices. From the April 27, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Implanted biomedical devices, such as cardiac stents, are implanted in over 2 million people every year, with the majority made from stainless steel. Stainless steel has many benefits – strength, generally stability, and the ability to maintain the required shape long after it has been implanted. But, it can also cause severe problems, including blood clotting if implanted in an artery, or an allergenic response due to release of metal ions such as nickel ions.

This particular initiative, devising a means to trick the body’s immune system into better acceptance of implants, is part of a larger project where the goal is,

… to allow cross-blood type organ transplants, meaning that blood types would not necessarily need to be matched between donor and recipient when an organ becomes available for transplantation.

In the meantime, the team has found a means that they hope will make the stainless steel implants easier for the immune system to accept,

… sophisticated carbohydrate (sugar) molecules needed to be attached to the stainless steel surface to bring about the necessary interaction with the body’s immune system. Its inherent stainless characteristic makes stainless steel a difficult material to augment with new functions, particularly with the controlled and close-to-perfect coverage needed for biomedical implants. The Edmonton-based team found that by first coating the surface of the stainless steel with a very thin layer (60 atoms deep) of glass silica using a technique available at the National Institute for Nanotechnology, called Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), they could overcome the inherent non-reactivity of the stainless steel. The silica provide a well-defined “chemical handle” through which the carbohydrate molecules, prepared in the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Carbohydrate Science, could be attached. Once the stainless steel had been controlled, the researchers demonstrated that the carbohydrate molecules covered the stainless steel in a highly controlled way, and in the correct orientation to interact with the immune system.

In trying to find out a little more about this project, I found a presentation* from 2008 (or earlier) made by Todd Lowary, Jillian Buriak, and Lori West, presumably for investment purposes, about another initiative associated with this project titled, Infant Heart Transplants and Nanotechnology. Here’s the hypothesis from slide 3 of the presentation,

Hypothesis: Exposing a newborn to ABO antigens attached to a nanoparticle or stent will induce tolerance during immune development and in turn allow transplants across the blood-group barrier.

Since a baby’s immune system isn’t fully developed at birth, exposing a child in need of a cardiac transplant to a suitably nanoparticle-coated stent would theoretically allow the child to develop tolerance for blood group types other than its own thereby allowing a cross-blood type organ transplant. Towards the end of the presentation (which isn’t dated), they have a timeline which includes filing for various patents and a proposed date of 2013 for human clinical trials.

*The presentation is on the Alberta Centre for Advanced Microsystems and Nanotechnology Products (ACAMP). According to their About page,

ACAMP (Alberta Centre for Advanced MNT Products) is a not for profit organization that provides specialized services to micro nano technology clients.

ACAMP’s services encompass key areas identified as critical for the commercialization of MNT products – Marketing & Business Development, Product Development, Packaging and Assembly, Test and Characterization.

That’s it for today.

ETA July 4, 2011: There’s a May 16, 2011 news item by Cameron Chai on Azonano about this team which offers additional information.