Tag Archives: nanomedicine

Bees and smart bombs

Leave a reply

I wasn’t expecting to think about bees and bombs again (after my July 28, 2010 posting on science knitting and yarn bombing respectively) but then this news item, Novel bee venom derivative forms a nanoparticle ‘smart bomb’ to target cancer cells, popped up on Nanowerk last week. From the news item,

The next time you are stung by a bee, here’s some consolation: a toxic protein in bee venom, when altered, significantly improves the effectiveness liposome-encapsulated drugs or dyes, such as those already used to treat or diagnose cancer. This research [Samuel Wickline], described in the August 2010 print issue of the FASEB [Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology] Journal, shows how modified melittin may revolutionize treatments for cancer and perhaps other conditions, such as arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and serious infections.

I gather the joournal’s editor is also experiencing these coincidences,

“Our journal is abuzz in a hive of bee-related discoveries. Just last month, we published research showing for the first time how honey kills bacteria. This month, the Wickline study shows how bee venom peptides can form “smart bombs” that deliver liposomal nanoparticles directly to their target, without collateral damage,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal.

That’s a lot of military jargon.

Simon Fraser University uses gold nanoparticles for anti-folding

Leave a reply

It always amazes me when something pops in my email and turns out to be related to one of my latest postings. Today, Simon Fraser University sent me a news release about Paul Li and his lab-on-a-chip work where he’s trying to keep DNA strands separate. From the news release,

A Simon Fraser University chemist who pioneered lab-on-a-biochip technology six years ago has struck gold in the research world again, this time literally.

Paul Li has combined nanoscale-sized-particles of gold with two powerful tools in molecular biology to make DNA analysis more than 10 times faster at room temperature, rather than previously required higher temperatures.

Li has sped up gene identification by fusing the slide-like microarray’s ability to identify known DNA gene sequences with the multi-channel microfluidic device’s ability to quickly analyse small amounts of liquid.

The palm-sized hybrid biochip is roughly the same thickness as the Canadian Loonie.

But what really makes the invention a biomedical gold mine is the addition of gold nanoparticles to the liquid being analysed on it. Mixed with DNA, tiny spheres of gold act as mini magnets that adhere to each of the DNA’s twin strands.

When the DNA is heated, the two strands separate. The gold nanoparticles keep them apart, which enables scientists to probe each strand with other pieces of DNA that are engineered to recognize known gene sequences.

“The key benefit of the gold is that it allows us to do our analysis at room temperature (25 degrees C),” explains Li. “That is half the conventional temperature needed, which requires the use of an apparatus that tolerates high temperatures.

“More importantly, DNA sequences with slight differences are now differentiated by the nanoparticle, but not by the high temperature.”

This invention will revolutionize researchers’ ability to probe biological samples and detect genes for forensic analysis, disease detection and drug development.

I may have stretched this just a bit by calling anti-folding but this process which uses the gold nanoparticles to keep the DNA strands from adhering to each other contrasts with the work mentioned in today’s earlier post, Folding, origami, and shapeshifting and an article with over 50,000 authors, where DNA was used to keep ensure that carbon nanotubes don’t adhere to each other.

A dissolving nanopatch that delivers vaccines without needles

1 Reply

I briefly noted the ‘nanopatch’ last year in an April 22, 2009 posting,

Scientists in Australia are developing a ‘nanopatch’ which would replace the use of needles for vaccinations.

It looks like those Australian scientists have gotten a step closer. According to a news item on Nanowerk,

“What we have been able to show for the first time is that the Nanopatch is completely dissolvable,” Professor [Mark] Kendall {Project Leader, Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology] said.

“That means zero needles, zero sharps, zero opportunity for contamination and zero chance of needle-stick injury.

“The World Health Organisation estimates that 30 percent of vaccinations in Africa are unsafe due to cross contamination caused by needle-stick injury. That’s a healthcare burden of about $25 per administration.”

The Nanopatch is smaller than a postage stamp and is packed with thousands of tiny projections – invisible to the human eye – now dried to include the vaccine itself together with biocompatible excipients.

…

Research published in journal PLos One [Public Library of Science] in April found that the Nanopatch achieved a protective immune response using an unprecedented one-hundredth of the standard needle and syringe dose.

Professor Kendall said this was 10 times better than any other delivery method.

Congratulations to Professor Kendall and his team.

Nano devices in your brain

1 Reply

I noted the other day my extreme lack of enthusiasm for the idea of having a phone in my brain (posting here) and while this news item on Nanowerk isn’t about a telephone it does illustrate the work that’s being done that could make a ‘telephone in your brain’  possible. From the news item,

Scientists have developed a brain implant that essentially melts into place, snugly fitting to the brain’s surface. The technology could pave the way for better devices to monitor and control seizures, and to transmit signals from the brain past damaged parts of the spinal cord.

“These implants have the potential to maximize the contact between electrodes and brain tissue, while minimizing damage to the brain. They could provide a platform for a range of devices with applications in epilepsy, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders,” said Walter Koroshetz, M.D., deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

You can take a look at what they’re talking about,

Neural electrode array wrapped onto a model of the brain. The wrapping process occurs spontaneously, driven by dissolution of a thin, supporting base of silk. (Image: C. Conway and J. Rogers, Beckman Institute)

NANO Magazine’s April 2010 issue country focus: Canada

3 Replies

I’m a little late to the party but the month isn’t over yet so, today I’m going to focus on Nano Magazine‘s April 2010 issue or more specifically their article about Canada and it’s nanotechnology scene. The magazine (available both in print and online) has selected Canada for its country focus this issue. From the April 2010, issue no. 17 editorial,

The featured country in this issue is Canada, notable for its well funded facilities and research that is aggressively focused on industrial applications. Although having no unifying national nanotechnology initiative, there are many extremely well-funded organisations with world class facilities that are undertaking important nano-related research. Ten of these centres are highlighted, along with a new network that will research into innovative plastics and manufacturing processes, and added value can be gained in this field – with the economic future benefit for Canada firmly in mind!

It’s always an eye-opening experience to see yourself as others see you. I had no idea Canadian research was “aggressively focused on industrial applications.” My view as a Canadian who can only see it from the inside reveals a scattered landscape with a few pockets of concentrated effort. It’s very difficult to obtain a national perspective as communication from the various pockets is occasional, hard to understand and/or interpret at times, and not easily accessible (some of these Canadian nanotechnology groups (in government agencies, research facilities, civil society groups, etc.) seem downright secretive.

As for the ‘aggressive focus on industrial applications’ by Canadians, I found it interesting and an observation I could not have made for two reasons. The first I’ve already noted (difficulty of obtaining the appropriate perspective from the inside) and, secondly, it seems to me that the pursuit of industrial applications is a global obsession and not confined to the field of nanotechnology, as well, I’m not able to establish a basepoint for comparison so the comment was quite a revelation. Still, it should be noted that Nano Magazine itself seems to have a very strong bias towards commercialization and business interests.

The editorial comment about “not have a unifying national nanotechnology initiative” I can heartily second, although the phrase brings the US National Nanotechnology Initiative strongly to mind where I think a plan (any kind of plan) would do just as well.

The article written by Fraser Shand and titled Innovation finds new energy in Western Canada provides a bit of word play that only a Canadian or someone who knows the province of Alberta, which has substantive oil reserves albeit in the sands, would be able to appreciate. Kudos to whoever came up with the title. Very well done!

I have to admit to being a bit puzzled here as I’m not sure if Shand’s article is the sole article about the Canadian nanotechnology scene  (it profiles only the province of Alberta) or if there are other articles profiling pockets of nanotechnology research present, largely in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia with smaller pockets in other provinces. I apologize for giving short shrift to six provinces but, as I’ve noted, information is difficult to come by and most of the information I can obtain is from the four provinces mentioned.

From the article,

Steeped in a pioneering spirit and enriched by ingenuity, one of the most exciting, modern day outposts on the nanotechnology frontier is located on the prairies of Western Canada. The province of Alberta is home to some of Canada’s most significant nanotechnology assets and has quickly become a world-destination for nanotechnology research, product development and commercialization.

While Alberta is rooted in the traditional resource sectors of energy, agriculture and forestry, it is dedicated to innovation. The Government of Alberta launched its nanotechnology strategy in 2007, committing $130 million to growth and development over five years. It also created a dedicated team.

Shand goes on to note Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT), located in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city, and its role in attracting world class researchers (see News Flash below). Other than the brief mention of a federal institution, the focus remains unrelentingly on Alberta and this is surprising since the title misled me into believing that the article would concern itself with Western Canada, which arguably includes the prairie provinces (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and British Columbia.

Meanwhile, the editorial led me to believe that I would find a national perspective with mention of 10 research centres somewhere in the April 2010 issue. If they are hiding part of the issue, I wish they’d note that somewhere easily visible (front page?) on their website and clarify the situation.

If this is the magazine’s full profile of the Canadian nanotechnology scene, they’ve either come to the conclusion that the only worthwhile work is being done in Alberta (I’m making an inference) or they found the process of gathering information about the other nanotechnology research pockets so onerous that they simply ignored them in favour of pulling a coherent article together.

I have been viewing the site on a regular basis since I heard about the April 2010 issue and this is the only time I’ve seen an article about Canada made available. They seem to have a policy of rotating the articles they make available for free access.

One other thing, a Nanotechnology Asset Map of Alberta is going to be fully accessible sometime in May 2010. I gather some of the folks from the now defunct, Nanotech BC organization advised the folks at nanoAlberta on developing the tool after the successful BC Nanotechnology Asset Map was printed in 2008 (?). I’m pleased to see the Alberta map is online which will make updating a much easier task and it gives a very handy visual representation that is difficult to achieve with print. You can see Alberta’s beta version at nanoAlberta. Scroll down and look to the left of the screen and at the sidebar for a link to the asset map.

I have to give props to the people in the province of Alberta who have supported nanotechnology research and commercialization efforts tirelessly. They enticed the federal government into building NINT in Edmonton by offering to pay a substantive percentage of the costs and have since created several centres for commercialization and additional research as noted in Shand’s article. Bravo!

News Flash: I just (in the last five minutes, i.e., 11:05 am PT) received this notice about the University of Alberta and nanotechnology. From the Eureka Alert notice,

A University of Alberta-led research team has taken a major step forward in understanding how T cells are activated in the course of an immune response by combining nanotechnology and cell biology. T cells are the all important trigger that starts the human body’s response to infection.

Christopher Cairo and his team are studying how one critical trigger for the body’s T cell response is switched on. Cairo looked at the molecule known as CD45 and its function in T cells. The activation of CD45 is part of a chain of events that allows the body to produce T cells that target an infection and, just as importantly, shut down overactive T cells that could lead to damage.

Cairo and crew are working on a national/international team that includes: “mathematician Dan Coombs (University of British Columbia), biochemist Jon Morrow (Yale University Medical School) and biophysicist David Golan (Harvard Medical School).” Their paper is being published in the April issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Now back to my regular programming: I should also mention Nano Québec which I believe was the first provincial organization founded  in Canada, circa 2005, to support nanotechnology research and commercialization efforts. French language site / English language site

NaNO Ontario has recently organized itself as the Nanotechnology Network of Ontario.

Unfortunately, Nanotech BC no longer exists.

If you know of any other provincial nanotechnology organizations, please do let me know.

Math, science and the movies; research on the African continent; diabetes and mice in Canada; NANO Magazine and Canada; poetry on Bowen Island, April 17, 2010

Leave a reply

About 10 years ago, I got interested in how the arts and sciences can inform each other when I was trying to organize an art/science event which never did get off the ground (although I still harbour hopes for it one day).  It all came back to me when I read Dave Bruggeman’s (Pasco Phronesis blog) recent post about a new Creative Science Studio opening at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California (USC). From Dave’s post,

It [Creative Science Studio] will start this fall at USC, where its School of Cinematic Arts makes heavy use of its proximity to Hollywood, and builds on its history of other projects that use science, technology and entertainment in other areas of research.

The studio will not only help studios improve the depiction of science in the products of their students, faculty and alumni (much like the Science and Entertainment Exchange), but help scientists create entertaining outreach products. In addition, science and engineering topics will be incorporated into the School’s curriculum and be supported in faculty research.

This announcement reminds me a little bit of an IBM/USC initiative in 2008 (from the news item on Nanowerk),

For decades Hollywood has looked to science for inspiration, now IBM researchers are looking to Hollywood for new ideas too.

The entertainment industry has portrayed possible future worlds through science fiction movies – many created by USC’s famous alumni – and IBM wants to tap into that creativity.

At a kickoff event at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, five of IBM’s top scientists met with students and alumni of the school, along with other invitees from the entertainment industry, to “Imagine the World in 2050.” The event is the first phase of an expected collaboration between IBM and USC to explore how combining creative vision and insight with science and technology trends might fuel novel solutions to the most pressing problems and opportunities of our time.

It’s interesting to note that the inspiration is two-way if the two announcements are taken together. The creative people can have access to the latest science and technology work for their pieces and scientists can explore how an idea or solution to a problem that exists in a story might be made real.

I’ve also noted that the first collaboration mentioned suggests that the Creative Science Studio will be able to “help scientists create entertaining outreach products.” My only caveat is that scientists too often believe that science communication means that they do all the communicating while we members of the public are to receive their knowledge enthusiastically and uncritically.

Moving on to the math that I mentioned in the head, there’s an announcement of a new paper that discusses the use of mathematics in cinematic special effects. (I believe that the word cinematic is starting to include games and other media in addition to movies.)  From the news item on physorg.com,

The use of mathematics in cinematic special effects is described in the article “Crashing Waves, Awesome Explosions, Turbulent Smoke, and Beyond: Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing in the Visual Effects Industry”, which will appear in the May 2010 issue of the NOTICES OF THE AMS [American Mathematical Society]. The article was written by three University of California, Los Angeles, mathematicians who have made significant contributions to research in this area: Aleka McAdams, Stanley Osher, and Joseph Teran.

Mathematics provides the language for expressing physical phenomena and their interactions, often in the form of partial differential equations. These equations are usually too complex to be solved exactly, so mathematicians have developed numerical methods and algorithms that can be implemented on computers to obtain approximate solutions. The kinds of approximations needed to, for example, simulate a firestorm, were in the past computationally intractable. With faster computing equipment and more-efficient architectures, such simulations are feasible today—and they drive many of the most spectacular feats in the visual effects industry.

This news item too brought back memories. There was a Canadian animated film, Ryan, which both won an Academy Award and involved significant collaboration between a mathematician and an animator. From the MITACS (Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems)  2005 newsletter, Student Notes:

Karan Singh is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, where co-directs the graphics and HCI lab, DGP. His research interests are in artist driven interactive graphics encompassing geometric modeling, character animation and non-photorealistic rendering. As a researcher at Alias (1995-1999), he architected facial and character animation tools for Maya (Technical Oscar 2003). He was involved with conceptual design and reverse engineering software at Paraform (Academy award for technical achievement 2001) and currently as Chief Scientist for Geometry Systems Inc. He has worked on numerous film and animation projects and most recently was the R+D Director for the Oscar winning animation Ryan (2005)

Someone at Student Notes (SN) goes on to interview Dr. Singh (here’s an excerpt),

SN: Some materials discussing the film Ryan mention the term “psychorealism”. What does this term mean? What problems does the transition from realism to psychorealism pose for the animator, or the computer graphics designer?

KS: Psychorealism is a term coined by Chris {Landreth, film animator] to refer to the glorious complexity of the human psyche depicted through the visual medium of art and animation. The transition is not a problem, psychorealism is stylistic, just a facet to the look and feel of an animation. The challenges lies in the choice and execution of the metaphorical imagery that the animator makes.

Both the article and Dr. Singh’s page are well worth checking out, if the links between mathematics and visual imagery interest you.

Research on the African continent

Last week I received a copy of Thompson Reuters Global Research Report Africa. My hat’s off to the authors, Jonathan Adams, Christopher King, and Daniel Hook for including the fact that Africa is a continent with many countries, many languages, and many cultures. From the report, (you may need to register at the site to gain access to it but the only contact I ever get is a copy of their newsletter alerting me to a new report and other incidental info.), p. 3,

More than 50 nations, hundreds of languages, and a welter of ethnic and cultural diversity. A continent possessed of abundant natural resources but also perennially wracked by a now-familiar litany of post-colonial woes: poverty, want, political instability and corruption, disease, and armed conflicts frequently driven by ethnic and tribal divisions but supplied by more mature economies. OECD’s recent African Economic Outlook sets out in stark detail the challenge, and the extent to which current global economic problems may make this worse …

While they did the usual about challenges, the authors go on to add this somewhat contrasting information.

Yet the continent is also home to a rich history of higher education and knowledge creation. The University of Al-Karaouine, at Fez in Morocco, was founded in CE 859 as a madrasa and is identified by many as the oldest degree-awarding institution in the world.ii It was followed in 970 by Al-Azhar University in Egypt. While it was some centuries before the curriculum expanded from religious instruction into the sciences this makes a very early marker for learning. Today, the Association of African Universities lists 225 member institutions in 44 countries and, as Thomson Reuters data demonstrate, African research has a network of ties to the international community.

A problem for Africa as a whole, as it has been for China and India, is the hemorrhage of talent. Many of its best students take their higher degrees at universities in Europe, Asia and North America. Too few return.

I can’t speak for the details included in the report which appears to be a consolidation of information available in various reports from international organizations. Personally, I find these consolidations very helpful as I would never have the time to track all of this down. As well, they have created a graphic which illustrates research relationships. I did have to read the analysis in order to better understand the graphic but I found the idea itself quite engaging and as I can see (pun!) that as one gets more visually literate with this type of graphic that it could be a very useful tool for grasping complex information very quickly.

Diabetes and mice

Last week, I missed this notice about a Canadian nanotechnology effort at the University of Calgary. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Using a sophisticated nanotechnology-based “vaccine,” researchers were able to successfully cure mice with type 1 diabetes and slow the onset of the disease in mice at risk for the disease. The study, co-funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), provides new and important insights into understanding how to stop the immune attack that causes type 1 diabetes, and could even have implications for other autoimmune diseases.

The study, conducted at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, was published today [April 8, 2010?] in the online edition of the scientific journal Immunity.

NANO Magazine

In more recent news, NANO Magazine’s new issue (no. 17) features a country focus on Canada. From the news item on Nanowerk,

In a special bumper issue of NANO Magazine we focus on two topics – textiles and nanomedicine. We feature articles about textiles from Nicholas Kotov and Kay Obendorf, and Nanomedicine from the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Hans Hofstraat of Philips Healthcare and an interview with Peter Singer, NANO Magazine Issue 17 is essential reading, www.nanomagazine.co.uk.

…

The featured country in this issue is Canada [emphasis mine], notable for its well funded facilities and research that is aggressively focused on industrial applications. Although having no unifying national nanotechnology initiative, there are many extremely well-funded organisations with world class facilities that are undertaking important nano-related research.

I hope I get a chance to read this issue.

Poetry on Bowen Island

Heather Haley, a local Vancouver, BC area, poet is hosting a special event this coming Saturday at her home on Bowen Island. From the news release,

VISITING POETS Salon & Reading

Josef & Heather’s Place
Bowen Island, BC
7:30  PM
Saturday, April 17, 2010

PENN KEMP, inimitable sound poet from London, Ontario

The illustrious CATHERINE OWEN from Vancouver, BC

To RSVP and get directions please email hshaley@emspace.com

Free Admission
Snacks & beverages-BYOB

Please come on over to our place on the sunny south slope to welcome these fabulous poets, hear their marvelous work, *see* their voices right here on Bowen Island!

London, ON performer and playwright PENN KEMP has published twenty-five books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as Canada’s first poetry CD-ROM and several videopoems.  She performs in festivals around the world, most recently in Britain, Brazil and India. Penn is the Canada Council Writer-in-Residence at UWO for 2009-10.  She hosts an eclectic literary show, Gathering Voices, on Radio Western, CHRWradio.com/talk/gatheringvoices.  Her own project for the year is a DVD devoted to Ecco Poetry, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action, which has just been released.
CATHERINE OWEN is a Vancouver writer who will be reading from her latest book Frenzy (Anvil Press 09) which she has just toured across the entirety of Canada. Her work has appeared in international magazines, seen translation into three languages and been nominated for honours such as the BC Book Prize and the CBC Award. She plays bass and sings in a couple of metal bands and runs her own tutoring and editing business.

I have seen one of Penn Kemp’s video poems. It was at least five years ago and it still resonates with me . Guess what? I highly recommend going if you can. If you’re curious about Heather and her work, go here.

The memristor rises; commercialization and academic research in the US; carbon nanotubes could be made safer than we thought

14 Replies

In 2008, two memristor papers were published in Nature and Nature Nanotechnology, respectively. In the first (Nature, May 2008 [article still behind a paywall], a team at HP Labs claimed they had proved the existence of memristors (a fourth member of electrical engineering’s ‘Holy Trinity of the capacitor, resistor, and inductor’). In the second paper (Nature Nanotechnology, July 2008 [article still behind a paywall]) the team reported that they had achieved engineering control.

I mention this because (a) there’s some new excitement about memristors and (b) I love the story (you can read my summary of the 2008 story here on the Nanotech Mysteries wiki).

Unbeknownst to me in 2008, there was another team, located in Japan, whose work  on slime mould inspired research by a group at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego)  which confirmed theorist Leon Chua’s (he first suggested memristors existed in 1971) intuition that biological organisms used memristive systems to learn. From an article (Synapse on a Chip) by Surf daddy Orca on the HPlus magazine site,

Experiments with slime molds in 2008 by Tetsu Saisuga at Hokkaido University in Sapporo sparked additional research at the University of California, San Diego by Max Di Ventra. Di Ventra was familiar with Chua’s work and built a memristive circuit that was able to learn and predict future signals. This ability turns out to be similar to the electrical activity involved in the ebb and flow of potassium and sodium ions across cellular membranes: synapses altering their response according to the frequency and strength of signals. New Scientist reports that Di Ventra’s work confirmed Chua’s suspicions that “synapses were memristors.” “The ion channel was the missing circuit element I was looking for,” says Chua, “and it already existed in nature.”

Fast forward to 2010 and a team at the University of Michigan led by Dr. Wei Lu showing how synapses behave like memristors (published in Nano Letters, DOI: 10.1021/nl904092h [article behind paywall]). (Fromthe  HPlus site article)

Scientific American describes a US military-funded project that is trying to use the memristor “to make neural computing a reality.” DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics Program (SyNAPSE) is funded to create “electronic neuromorphic machine technology that is scalable to biological levels.”

I’m not sure if the research in Michigan and elsewhere is being funded by DARPA (the US Dept. of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) although it seems likely.

In the short term, scientists talk about energy savings (no need to reboot your computer when you turn it back on). In the longer term, they talk about hardware being able to learn. (Thanks to the Foresight Institute for the latest update on the memristor story and the pointer to HPlus.) Do visit the HPlus site as there are some videos of scientists talking about memristors and additional information (there’s yet another team working on research that is tangentially related).

Commercializing academic research in US

Thanks to Dave Bruggeman at the Pasco Phronesis blog who’s posted some information about a White House Request for Information (RFI) on commercializing academic research. This is of particular interest not just because of the discussion about innovation in Canada but also because the US National Nanotechnology Initiative’s report to PCAST (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, my comments about the webcast of the proceedings here). From the Pasco Phronesis posting about the NNI report,

While the report notes that the U.S. continues to have a strong nanotechnology sector and corresponding support from the government. However, as with most other economic and research sectors, the rest of the world is catching up, or spending enough to try and catch up to the United States.

According to the report, more attention needs to be paid to commercialization efforts (a concern not unique to nanotechnology).

I don’t know how long the White House’s RFI has been under development but it was made public at the end of March 2010 just weeks after the latest series of reports to PCAST. As for the RFI itself, from the Pasco Phronesis posting about it,

The RFI questions are organized around two basic concerns:

  • Seeking ideas for supporting the commercialization and diffusion of university research. This would include best practices, useful models, metrics (with evidence of their success), and suggested changes in federal policy and/or research funding. In addition, the RFI is interested in how commercialization ecosystems can be developed where none exist.
  • Collecting data on private proof of concept centers (POCCs). These entities seek to help get research over the so-called “Valley of Death” between demonstrable research idea and final commercial product. The RFI is looking for similar kinds of information as for commercialization in general: best practices, metrics, underlying conditions that facilitate such centers.

I find the news of this RFI a little surprising since I had the impression that commercialization of academic research in the US is far more advanced than it is here in Canada. Mind you, that impression is based on a conversation I had with a researcher a year ago who commented that his mentor at a US university rolled out more than 1 start up company every year. As I understand it researchers in Canada may start up one or two companies in their career but never a series of them.

Carbon nanotubes, is exposure ok?

There’s some new research which suggests that carbon nanotubes can be broken down by an enzyme. From the news item on Nanowerk,

A team of Swedish and American scientists has shown for the first time that carbon nanotubes can be broken down by an enzyme – myeloperoxidase (MPO) – found in white blood cells. Their discoveries are presented in Nature Nanotechnology (“Carbon nanotubes degraded by neutrophil myeloperoxidase induce less pulmonary inflammation”) and contradict what was previously believed, that carbon nanotubes are not broken down in the body or in nature. The scientists hope that this new understanding of how MPO converts carbon nanotubes into water and carbon dioxide can be of significance to medicine.

“Previous studies have shown that carbon nanotubes could be used for introducing drugs or other substances into human cells,” says Bengt Fadeel, associate professor at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. “The problem has been not knowing how to control the breakdown of the nanotubes, which can caused unwanted toxicity and tissue damage. Our study now shows how they can be broken down biologically into harmless components.”

I believe they tested single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) only as the person who wrote the news release seems unaware that mutil-walled CNTs also exist. In any event, this could be very exciting if this research holds up under more testing.

Responsible science communication and magic bullets; lego and pasta analogies; sing about physics

2 Replies

Cancer’s ‘magic bullet],  a term which has been around for decades, is falling into disuse and deservedly. So it’s disturbing to see it used by someone in McGill University’s (Montreal, Canada) communications department for a recent breakthrough by their researchers.

The reason ‘magic bullet for cancer’ has been falling into is disuse because it does not function well as a metaphor with what we now know about biology. (The term itself dates from the 19th century and chemist, Paul Erlich.) It continues to exist because it’s an easy (and lazy) way to get attention and headlines. Unfortunately, hyperbolic writing of this type obscures the extraordinary and exciting work that researchers are accomplishing. From the news release on the McGill website (also available on Nanowerk here),

A team of McGill Chemistry Department researchers led by Dr. Hanadi Sleiman has achieved a major breakthrough in the development of nanotubes – tiny “magic bullets” that could one day deliver drugs to specific diseased cells.

The lead researcher seems less inclined to irresponsible hyperbole,

One of the possible future applications for this discovery is cancer treatment. However, Sleiman cautions, “we are still far from being able to treat diseases using this technology; this is only a step in that direction. Researchers need to learn how to take these DNA nanostructures, such as the nanotubes here, and bring them back to biology to solve problems in nanomedicine, from drug delivery, to tissue engineering to sensors,” she said.

You’ll notice that the researcher says these ‘DNA nanotubes’ have to be brought “back to biology.” This comment brought to mind a recent post on 2020 Science (Andrew Maynard’s blog) about noted chemist and nanoscientist’s, George Whitesides, concerns/doubts about the direction for cancer and nanotechnology research. From Andrew’s post,

Cancer treatment has been a poster-child for nanotechnology for almost as long as I’ve been involved with the field. As far back as in 1999, a brochure on nanotechnology published by the US government described future “synthetic anti-body-like nanoscale drugs or devices that might seek out and destroy malignant cells wherever they might be in the body.”

…

So I was somewhat surprised to see the eminent chemist and nano-scientist George Whitesides questioning how much progress we’ve made in developing nanotechnology-based cancer treatments, in an article published in the Columbia Chronicle.

Whitesides comments are quite illuminating (from the article, Microscopic particles have huge possibilites [sic], by Ivana Susic,

George Whitesides, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, said that while the technology sounds impressive, he thinks the focus should be on using nanoparticles in imaging and diagnosing, not treatment.

The problem lies in being able to deliver the treatment to the right cells, and Whitesides said this has proven difficult.

“Cancer cells are abnormal cells, but they’re still us,” he said. [emphasis is mine]

The nanoparticles sent in to destroy the cancer cells may also destroy unaffected cells, because they can sometimes have cancer markers even if they’re healthy. Tumors have also been known to be “genetically flexible” and mutate around several different therapies, Whitesides explained. This keeps them from getting recognized by the therapeutic drugs.

The other problem with targeting cancer cells is the likelihood that only large tumors will be targeted, missing smaller clumps of developing tumors.

“We need something that finds isolated [cancer] clumps that’s somewhere else in the tissue … it’s not a tumor, it’s a whole bunch of tumors,” Whitesides said.

The upside to the treatment possibilities is that they buy the patient time, he said, which is very important to many cancer patients.

“It’s easy to say that one is going to have a particle that’s going to recognize the tumor once it gets there and will do something that triggers the death of the cell, it’s just that we don’t know how to do either one of these parts,” he said.

There is no simple solution. The more scientists learn about biology the more complicated it becomes, not less. [emphasis is mine] Whitesides said one effective way to deal with cancer is to reduce the risk of getting it by reducing the environmental factors that lead to cancer.

“It’s a biology problem, not a particle problem,” he said. [emphasis is mine]

If you are interested , do read Andrew’s post and the comments that follow as well as the article that includes Whitesides’ comments and quotes from Andrew in his guise as Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

All of this discussion follows on yesterday’s (Mar.17.10) post about how confusing inaccurate science reporting can be.

Moving onwards to two analogies, lego and pasta. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have ‘built’ inorganic (not carbon-based) molecular structures which could potentionally be used as more energy efficient and environmentally friendly catalysts for industrial purposes. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers within the Department of Chemistry created hollow cube-based frameworks from polyoxometalates (POMs) – complex compounds made from metal and oxygen atoms – which stick together like LEGO bricks meaning a whole range of well-defined architectures can be developed with great ease.

…

The molecular sensing aspects of this new material are related to the potassium and lithium ions, which sit loosely in cavities in the framework. These can be displaced by other positively charged ions such as transition metals or small organic molecules while at the same time leaving the framework intact.

These characteristics highlight some of the many potential uses and applications of POM frameworks, but their principle application is their use as catalysts – a molecule used to start or speed-up a chemical reaction making it more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Moving from lego to pasta with a short stop at the movies, we have MIT researchers describing how they and their team have found a way to ‘imprint’ computer chips by using a new electron-beam lithography process to encourage copolymers to self-assemble on the chip. (Currently, manufacturers use light lasers in a photolithographic process which is becoming less effective as chips grow ever smaller and light waves become too large to use.) From the news item on Nanowerk,

The new technique uses “copolymers” made of two different types of polymer. Berggren [Karl] compares a copolymer molecule to the characters played by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in the movie Midnight Run, a bounty hunter and a white-collar criminal who are handcuffed together but can’t stand each other. Ross [Caroline] prefers a homelier analogy: “You can think of it like a piece of spaghetti joined to a piece of tagliatelle,” she says. “These two chains don’t like to mix. So given the choice, all the spaghetti ends would go here, and all the tagliatelle ends would go there, but they can’t, because they’re joined together.” In their attempts to segregate themselves, the different types of polymer chain arrange themselves into predictable patterns. By varying the length of the chains, the proportions of the two polymers, and the shape and location of the silicon hitching posts, Ross, Berggren, and their colleagues were able to produce a wide range of patterns useful in circuit design.

ETA (March 18,2010): Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast continues with his his posts (maybe these will form a series?) about more accuracy in reporting, specifically the news item I’ve just highlighted. Check it out here.

To finish on a completely different note (pun intended), I have a link (courtesy of Dave Bruggeman of the Pasco Phronesis blog by way of the Science Cheerleader blog) to a website eponymously (not sure that’s the right term) named physicssongs.org. Do enjoy such titles as: I got Physics; Snel’s Law – Macarena Style!; and much, much more.

Tomorrow: I’m not sure if I’ll have time to do much more than link to it and point to some commentary but the UK’s Nanotechnologies Strategy has just been been released today.

Dem bones at McGill; innovation from the Canadian business community?; the archiving frontier; linking and copyright

1 Reply

I have a number of bits today amongst them, Canadian nanotechnology, Canadian business innovation, digital archiving, and copyrights and linking.

A Quebec biotech company, Enobia Pharma is working with Dr. Marc McKee on treatments for genetic bone diseases. From the news item on Nanowerk,

The field is known as biomineralization and it involves cutting-edge, nanotech investigation into the proteins, enzymes and other molecules that control the coupling of mineral ions (calcium and phosphate) to form nano-crystals within the bone structure. The treatment, enzyme replacement therapy to treat hypophosphatasia, is currently undergoing clinical testing in several countries including Canada. Hypophosphatasia is a rare and severe disorder resulting in poor bone mineralization. In infants, symptoms include respiratory insufficiency, failure to thrive and rickets.

This research in biomineralization (coupling of mineral ions to form nano-crystals) could lead to better treatments for other conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, and kidney stones.

McKee’s research is being funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research  From the Nanowerk news item,

McKee’s research program is a concrete example of how university researchers are working with private sector partners as an integral part of Canada’s innovative knowledge economy, and the positive outcomes their collaborations can offer.

I don’t think that businesses partnering with academic institutions in research collaborations is precisely what they mean when they talk about business innovation (research and development). From a March 2, 2010 article about innovation by Preston Manning in the Globe & Mail,

Government competition policy and support for science, technology, and innovation (STI) can complement business leadership on the innovation front, but it is not a substitute for such leadership. Action to increase innovation in the economy is first and foremost a business responsibility.

Manning goes on to describe what he’s done on this matter and asks for suggestions on how to encourage Canadian business to be more innovative. (Thanks to Pasco Phronesis for pointing me to Manning’s article.) I guess the problem is that what we’ve been doing has worked well enough and so there’s no great incentive to change.

I’ve been on an archiving kick lately and so here’s some more. The British Library recently (Feb.25.10) announced public access to their UK Web Archive, a project where they have been saving online materials. From the news release,

British Library Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley said:

“Since 2004 the British Library has led the UK Web Archive in its mission to archive a record of the major cultural and social issues being discussed online. Throughout the project the Library has worked directly with copyright holders to capture and preserve over 6,000 carefully selected websites, helping to avoid the creation of a ‘digital black hole’ in the nation’s memory.

“Limited by the existing legal position, at the current rate it will be feasible to collect just 1% of all free UK websites by 2011. We hope the current DCMS consultation will enact the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act and extend the provision of legal deposit through regulationto cover freely available UK websites, providingregular snapshots ofthe free UK web domain for the benefit of future research.”

Mike Masnick at Techdirt notes (here) that the British Library has to get permission (the legal position Dame Brindley refers to) to archive these materials and this would seem to be an instance where ‘fair use’ should be made to apply.

On the subject of losing data, I read an article by Mike Roberts for the Vancouver Province, January 22, 2006, p. B5 (digital copy here) that posed this question, What if the world lost its memory? It was essentially an interview with Luciana Duranti (chair of the Master of Archival Studies programme and professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada) where she commented about the memories we had already lost. From the article,

Alas, she says, every day something else is irretrievably lost.

The research records of the U.S. Marines for the past 25 years? Gone.

East German land-survey records vital to the reunification of Germany? Toast.

A piece of digital interactive music recorded by Canadian composer Keith Hamel just eight years ago?

“Inaccessible, over, finito,” says Duranti, educated in her native Italy and a UBC prof since 1987.

Duranti, director of InterPARES (International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems), an international cyber-preservation project comprising 20 countries and 60 global archivists, says original documentation is a thing of the past.

I was shocked by how much ‘important’ information had been lost and I assume still is. (Getting back to the UK Web Archives, if they can only save 1% of the UK’s online material then a lot has got to be missing.)

For anyone curious about InterPARES, I got my link for the Roberts article from this page on the InterPARES 1 website.

Back to Techdirt and Mike Masnick who has educated me as to a practice I had noted but not realized is ‘the way things are done amongst journalists’. If you spend enough time on the web, you’ll notice stories that make their way to newspapers without any acknowledgment of  their web or writerly origins and I’m not talking about news releases which are designed for immediate placement in the media or rewritten/reworked before placement. From the post on Techdirt,

We recently wrote about how the NY Post was caught taking a blogger’s story and rewriting it for itself — noting the hypocrisy of a News Corp. newspaper copying from someone else, after Rupert Murdoch and his top execs have been going around decrying various news aggregators (and Google especially) for “stealing” from News Corp. newspapers. It’s even more ridiculous when you think about it — because the “stealing” that Rupert is upset about is Google linking to the original story — a step that his NY Post writer couldn’t even be bothered to do.

Of course, as a few people pointed out in the comments, this sort of “re-reporting” is quite common in the traditional news business. You see it all the time in newspapers, magazines and broadcast TV. They take a story that was found somewhere else and just “re-report” it, so that they have their own version of it.

That’s right, it’s ‘re-reporting’ without attributions or links. Masnick’s post (he’s bringing in Felix Salmon’s comments) attributes this to a ‘print’ mentality where reporters are accustomed to claiming first place and see acknowledgments and links as failure while ‘digital natives’ acknowledge and link regularly since they view these as signs of respect. I’m not going to disagree but I would like to point out that citing sources is pretty standard for academics or anyone trained in that field. I imagine most reporters have one university or college degree, surely they learned the importance of citing one’s sources. So does training as a journalist erode that understanding?

And, getting back to this morning’s archival subtheme, at the end of Clark Hoyt’s (blogger for NY Times) commentary about the plagiarism he had this to say,

Finally, The Times owes readers a full accounting. I asked [Philip] Corbett [standards editor] for the examples of Kouwe’s plagiarism and suggested that editors’ notes be appended to those articles on the Web site and in The Times’s electronic archives. Corbett would not provide the examples and said the paper was not inclined to flag them, partly because there were some clear-cut cases and others that were less clear. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked.

I’d draw it at those he regards as clear. To do otherwise is to leave a corrupted record within the archives of The Times. It is not the way to close the case.

One last thing, Heather Haley is one of the guests appearing tonight in Rock Against Prisons.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

7:00pm – 11:55pm

Little Mountain Gallery

195 east 26th Ave [Vancouver, Canada]

More details from my previous announcement about this event here.

Research and the 2010 Canadian federal budget; nanotechnology, hype, markets, and medicine; Visionaries in Banagalore; materials science and PBS offer a grant opportunity; To Think To Write To Publish for emerging science writers

1 Reply

It’s time for quiet appreciation as Rob Annan (Don’t leave Canada behind blog) points out in his breakdown of the 2010 Canadian federal budget’s allocation for research.  From the posting (Budget 2010 – A Qualified Success),

Last year’s cuts to the research granting councils, though relatively small, were magnified by their inclusion in a so-called “stimulus budget” full of spending increases in other areas.

This year, the opposite is true. Funding increases, though relatively small, are made more significant by the context of spending restraint evidenced elsewhere in the budget.

Rob goes through the budget allocations for each of the research funding agencies and provides a comparison with previous funding amounts. As he points out, it’s not time to pop the champagne corks as this is a modest success albeit at a time when many were expecting deep cuts. One comment from me, this increase is not a good reason to get complacent and run back to the research facilities effectively disappearing from the public discourse. After all, there’s another budget next year.

Pallab Chatterjee of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) recently made some comments (on EDN [Electronics Design, Strategy, News] about nanotechnology and commercialization focusing (somewhat) on nanomedicine. It caught my eye because Andrew Maynard (2020 Science blog) has written a piece on cancer and nanomedicine which poses some questions about nanomedicine hype. First, the comments from Chatterjee,

The Nanosys announcement heralds the arrival of nanotechnology products from other companies that will soon be entering the market and shows that the typical eight- to 10-year gestation period for breakthrough technologies to reach commercialization is now reaching an end. For example, nanomedicine is now emerging as a major topic of investigation. To help solidify the topics in this area and to determine the best direction for commercialization, the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) held the First Global Congress on NEMB (nanoengineering for medicine and biology), a three-day event that took place last month in Houston.

As nanomedicine products hit the commercial marketplace, you can expect hype. According to Andrew (Nanotechnology and cancer treatment: Do we need a reality check?), government agencies have already been on a ‘hype’ trail of sorts (from 2020 Science),

Cancer treatment has been a poster-child for nanotechnology for almost as long as I’ve been involved with the field. As far back as in 1999, a brochure on nanotechnology published by the US government described future “synthetic anti-body-like nanoscale drugs or devices that might seek out and destroy malignant cells wherever they might be in the body.” Over the intervening decade, nanotechnology has become a cornerstone of the National Cancer Institute’s fight against cancer, and has featured prominently in the US government’s support for nanotechnology research and development.

Andrew goes on to quote various experts in the field discussing what they believe can be accomplished. These comments are hopeful and measured and stand in stark contrast to what I imagine will occur once nanomedicine products seriously enter the marketplace. Take for example, Michael Berger’s (Nanowerk) comments about the wildly overhyped nanotechnology market valuations. From Berger’s 2007 article (Debunking the trillion dollar nanotechnology market size hype),

There seems to be an arms race going on among nanotechnology investment and consulting firms as to who can come up with the highest figure for the size of the “nanotechnology market”. The current record stands at $2.95 trillion by 2015. The granddaddy of the trillion-dollar forecasts of course is the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) “$1 trillion by 2015”, which inevitably gets quoted in many articles, business plans and funding applications.

…

The problem with these forecasts is that they are based on a highly inflationary data collection and compilation methodology. The result is that the headline figures – $1 trillion!, $2 trillion!, $3 trillion! – are more reminiscent of supermarket tabloids than serious market research. Some would call it pure hype. This type of market size forecast leads to misguided expectations because few people read the entire report and in the end only the misleading trillion-dollar headline figure gets quoted out of context, even by people who should now better, and finally achieves a life by itself.

The comments and the figures that Berger cites are still being used ensuring commentary is still relevant. In fact, if you apply the psychology of how these claims become embedded, these comments can be applied to nanomedicine as well.

On a not entirely unrelated note, MIT’s (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Technology Review Journal has organised a meeting in Bangalore which starts on Monday, March 8, 2010. From the news item on Business Standard,

Nearly a hundred of the world’s leading business and tech visionaries will discuss next generation technologies that are ready for the market in the annual Emerging Technologies Conference (Emtech) in Bangalore next week.

The two-day conference begining March 8 is being held in India for the second year in succession in association with CyberMedia.

The conference, organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review journal, will cover a variety of cutting edge topics ranging from green computing techniques, clean transport alternatives and smarter energy grid to the role that wireless can play in connecting India.

Special sessions on innovative diagnostics and neglected diseases will draw attention towards unheralded health care fields. A session on the future of nanotechnology will touch on new capabilities, giving people new ways to make things and heal bodies.

Finally, I got my monthly NISENet (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) newsletter and found a couple of opportunities (from the newsletter), one for materials scientists,

→ Making Stuff Grant Opportunity
The Materials Research Society and WGBH will be premiering Making Stuff, a four-part PBS series about materials science, in fall 2010 and are looking for outreach partners to organize and host events, demos, workshops, and science cafes in connection with the premiere.  They’ll provide outreach partners with a stipend as well as a resource toolkit.  One of the four episodes is focused on nanotechnology, and nano will be a common thread throughout the episodes. You can find lots more information, as well as the application form, here.  Applications are due April 1st.

and one for emerging science writers,

→ Calling all “next generation” science and tech writers!

Our partners at ASU asked us to pass along this writing and publishing fellowship opportunity to all of you. They’re now accepting applications for To Think-To Write-To Publish, an intensive two-day workshop followed by a three-day conference in Arizona for early career writers of any genre with an interest in science and technology. The deadline is March 15th, click here to download the flier.

If you are interested in NISENet or want to submit a haiku about nanotechnology (sadly the newsletter doesn’t feature one this month), their website is here.