Tag Archives: Polish Academy of Sciences

Going blind when your neural implant company flirts with bankruptcy (long read)

This story got me to thinking about what happens when any kind of implant company (pacemaker, deep brain stimulator, etc.) goes bankrupt or is acquired by another company with a different business model.

As I worked on this piece, more issues were raised and the scope expanded to include prosthetics along with implants while the focus narrowed to neuro as in, neural implants and neuroprosthetics. At the same time, I found salient examples for this posting in other medical advances such as gene editing.

In sum, all references to implants and prosthetics are to neural devices and some issues are illustrated with salient examples from other medical advances (specifically, gene editing).

Definitions (for those who find them useful)

The US Food and Drug Administration defines implants and prosthetics,

Medical implants are devices or tissues that are placed inside or on the surface of the body. Many implants are prosthetics, intended to replace missing body parts. Other implants deliver medication, monitor body functions, or provide support to organs and tissues.

As for what constitutes a neural implant/neuroprosthetic, there’s this from Emily Waltz’s January 20, 2020 article (How Do Neural Implants Work? Neural implants are used for deep brain stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, and mind-controlled prostheses) for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum magazine,

A neural implant, then, is a device—typically an electrode of some kind—that’s inserted into the body, comes into contact with tissues that contain neurons, and interacts with those neurons in some way.

Now, let’s start with the recent near bankruptcy of a retinal implant company.

The company goes bust (more or less)

From a February 25, 2022 Science Friday (a National Public Radio program) posting/audio file, Note: Links have been removed,

Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. “I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train,” Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. “I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little ‘beep, beep, beep’ sound.’”

It wasn’t her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she’d been able to see with the implant’s help vanished.

Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes. He got the first-generation Argus I implant, made by the company Second Sight Medical Products, in his right eye in 2004, and the subsequent Argus II implant in his left 11 years later. He helped the company test the technology, spoke to the press movingly about his experiences, and even met Stevie Wonder at a conference. “[I] went from being just a person that was doing the testing to being a spokesman,” he remembers.

Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”

Science Friday and the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] Spectrum magazine collaborated to produce this story. You’ll find the audio files and the transcript of interviews with the authors and one of the implant patients in this February 25, 2022 Science Friday (a National Public Radio program) posting.

Here’s more from the February 15, 2022 IEEE Spectrum article by Eliza Strickland and Mark Harris,

Ross Doerr, another Second Sight patient, doesn’t mince words: “It is fantastic technology and a lousy company,” he says. He received an implant in one eye in 2019 and remembers seeing the shining lights of Christmas trees that holiday season. He was thrilled to learn in early 2020 that he was eligible for software upgrades that could further improve his vision. Yet in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he heard troubling rumors about the company and called his Second Sight vision-rehab therapist. “She said, ‘Well, funny you should call. We all just got laid off,’ ” he remembers. She said, ‘By the way, you’re not getting your upgrades.’ ”

These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.

The writers included some information about what happened to the business, from the February 15, 2022 IEEE Spectrum article, Note: Links have been removed,

After Second Sight discontinued its retinal implant in 2019 and nearly went out of business in 2020, a public offering in June 2021 raised US $57.5 million at $5 per share. The company promised to focus on its ongoing clinical trial of a brain implant, called Orion, that also provides artificial vision. But its stock price plunged to around $1.50, and in February 2022, just before this article was published, the company announced a proposed merger with an early-stage biopharmaceutical company called Nano Precision Medical (NPM). None of Second Sight’s executives will be on the leadership team of the new company, which will focus on developing NPM’s novel implant for drug delivery.The company’s current leadership declined to be interviewed for this article but did provide an emailed statement prior to the merger announcement. It said, in part: “We are a recognized global leader in neuromodulation devices for blindness and are committed to developing new technologies to treat the broadest population of sight-impaired individuals.”

It’s unclear what Second Sight’s proposed merger means for Argus patients. The day after the merger was announced, Adam Mendelsohn, CEO of Nano Precision Medical, told Spectrum that he doesn’t yet know what contractual obligations the combined company will have to Argus and Orion patients. But, he says, NPM will try to do what’s “right from an ethical perspective.” The past, he added in an email, is “simply not relevant to the new future.”

There may be some alternatives, from the February 15, 2022 IEEE Spectrum article (Note: Links have been removed),

Second Sight may have given up on its retinal implant, but other companies still see a need—and a market—for bionic vision without brain surgery. Paris-based Pixium Vision is conducting European and U.S. feasibility trials to see if its Prima system can help patients with age-related macular degeneration, a much more common condition than retinitis pigmentosa.

Daniel Palanker, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University who licensed his technology to Pixium, says the Prima implant is smaller, simpler, and cheaper than the Argus II. But he argues that Prima’s superior image resolution has the potential to make Pixium Vision a success. “If you provide excellent vision, there will be lots of patients,” he tells Spectrum. “If you provide crappy vision, there will be very few.”

Some clinicians involved in the Argus II work are trying to salvage what they can from the technology. Gislin Dagnelie, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has set up a network of clinicians who are still working with Argus II patients. The researchers are experimenting with a thermal camera to help users see faces, a stereo camera to filter out the background, and AI-powered object recognition. These upgrades are unlikely to result in commercial hardware today but could help future vision prostheses.

The writers have carefully balanced this piece so it is not an outright condemnation of the companies (Second Sight and Nano Precision), from the February 15, 2022 IEEE Spectrum article,

Failure is an inevitable part of innovation. The Argus II was an innovative technology, and progress made by Second Sight may pave the way for other companies that are developing bionic vision systems. But for people considering such an implant in the future, the cautionary tale of Argus patients left in the lurch may make a tough decision even tougher. Should they take a chance on a novel technology? If they do get an implant and find that it helps them navigate the world, should they allow themselves to depend upon it?

Abandoning the Argus II technology—and the people who use it—might have made short-term financial sense for Second Sight, but it’s a decision that could come back to bite the merged company if it does decide to commercialize a brain implant, believes Doerr.

For anyone curious about retinal implant technology (specifically the Argus II), I have a description in a June 30, 2015 posting.

Speculations and hopes for neuroprosthetics

The field of neuroprosthetics is very active. Dr Arthur Saniotis and Prof Maciej Henneberg have written an article where they speculate about the possibilities of a neuroprosthetic that may one day merge with neurons in a February 21, 2022 Nanowerk Spotlight article,

For over a generation several types of medical neuroprosthetics have been developed, which have improved the lives of thousands of individuals. For instance, cochlear implants have restored functional hearing in individuals with severe hearing impairment.

Further advances in motor neuroprosthetics are attempting to restore motor functions in tetraplegic, limb loss and brain stem stroke paralysis subjects.

Currently, scientists are working on various kinds of brain/machine interfaces [BMI] in order to restore movement and partial sensory function. One such device is the ‘Ipsihand’ that enables movement of a paralyzed hand. The device works by detecting the recipient’s intention in the form of electrical signals, thereby triggering hand movement.

Another recent development is the 12 month BMI gait neurohabilitation program that uses a visual-tactile feedback system in combination with a physical exoskeleton and EEG operated AI actuators while walking. This program has been tried on eight patients with reported improvements in lower limb movement and somatic sensation.

Surgically placed electrode implants have also reduced tremor symptoms in individuals with Parkinson’s disease.

Although neuroprosthetics have provided various benefits they do have their problems. Firstly, electrode implants to the brain are prone to degradation, necessitating new implants after a few years. Secondly, as in any kind of surgery, implanted electrodes can cause post-operative infection and glial scarring. Furthermore, one study showed that the neurobiological efficacy of an implant is dependent on the rate of speed of its insertion.

But what if humans designed a neuroprosthetic, which could bypass the medical glitches of invasive neuroprosthetics? However, instead of connecting devices to neural networks, this neuroprosthetic would directly merge with neurons – a novel step. Such a neuroprosthetic could radically optimize treatments for neurodegenerative disorders and brain injuries, and possibly cognitive enhancement [emphasis mine].

A team of three international scientists has recently designed a nanobased neuroprosthetic, which was published in Frontiers in Neuroscience (“Integration of Nanobots Into Neural Circuits As a Future Therapy for Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders“). [open access paper published in 2018]

An interesting feature of their nanobot neuroprosthetic is that it has been inspired from nature by way of endomyccorhizae – a type of plant/fungus symbiosis, which is over four hundred million years old. During endomyccorhizae, fungi use numerous threadlike projections called mycelium that penetrate plant roots, forming colossal underground networks with nearby root systems. During this process fungi take up vital nutrients while protecting plant roots from infections – a win-win relationship. Consequently, the nano-neuroprosthetic has been named ‘endomyccorhizae ligand interface’, or ‘ELI’ for short.

The Spotlight article goes on to describe how these nanobots might function. As for the possibility of cognitive enhancement, I wonder if that might come to be described as a form of ‘artificial intelligence’.

(Dr Arthur Saniotis and Prof Maciej Henneberg are both from the Department of Anthropology, Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Polish Academy of Sciences; and Biological Anthropology and Comparative Anatomy Research Unit, Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide. Abdul-Rahman Sawalma who’s listed as an author on the 2018 paper is from the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, Al-Quds University, Beit Hanina, Palestine.)

Saniotis and Henneberg’s Spotlight article presents an optimistic view of neuroprosthetics. It seems telling that they cite cochlear implants as a success story when it is viewed by many as ethically fraught (see the Cochlear implant Wikipedia entry; scroll down to ‘Criticism and controversy’).

Ethics and your implants

This is from an April 6, 2015 article by Luc Henry on technologist.eu,

Technologist: What are the potential consequences of accepting the “augmented human” in society?

Gregor Wolbring: There are many that we might not even envision now. But let me focus on failure and obsolescence [emphasis mine], two issues that are rarely discussed. What happens when the mechanisms fails in the middle of an action? Failure has hazardous consequences, but obsolescence has psychological ones. …. The constant surgical inter­vention needed to update the hardware may not be feasible. A person might feel obsolete if she cohabits with others using a newer version.

T. Are researchers working on prosthetics sometimes disconnected from reality?

G. W. Students engaged in the development of prosthetics have to learn how to think in societal terms and develop a broader perspective. Our education system provides them with a fascination for clever solutions to technological challenges but not with tools aiming at understanding the consequences, such as whether their product might increase or decrease social justice.

Wolbring is a professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine (profile page) who writes on social issues to do with human enhancement/ augmentation. As well,

Some of his areas of engagement are: ability studies including governance of ability expectations, disability studies, governance of emerging and existing sciences and technologies (e.g. nanoscale science and technology, molecular manufacturing, aging, longevity and immortality, cognitive sciences, neuromorphic engineering, genetics, synthetic biology, robotics, artificial intelligence, automatization, brain machine interfaces, sensors), impact of science and technology on marginalized populations, especially people with disabilities he governance of bodily enhancement, sustainability issues, EcoHealth, resilience, ethics issues, health policy issues, human rights and sport.

He also maintains his own website here.

Not just startups

I’d classify Second Sight as a tech startup company and they have a high rate of failure, which may not have been clear to the patients who had the implants. Clinical trials can present problems too as this excerpt from my September 17, 2020 posting notes,

This October 31, 2017 article by Emily Underwood for Science was revelatory,

“In 2003, neurologist Helen Mayberg of Emory University in Atlanta began to test a bold, experimental treatment for people with severe depression, which involved implanting metal electrodes deep in the brain in a region called area 25 [emphases mine]. The initial data were promising; eventually, they convinced a device company, St. Jude Medical in Saint Paul, to sponsor a 200-person clinical trial dubbed BROADEN.

This month [October 2017], however, Lancet Psychiatry reported the first published data on the trial’s failure. The study stopped recruiting participants in 2012, after a 6-month study in 90 people failed to show statistically significant improvements between those receiving active stimulation and a control group, in which the device was implanted but switched off.

… a tricky dilemma for companies and research teams involved in deep brain stimulation (DBS) research: If trial participants want to keep their implants [emphases mine], who will take responsibility—and pay—for their ongoing care? And participants in last week’s meeting said it underscores the need for the growing corps of DBS researchers to think long-term about their planned studies.”

Symbiosis can be another consequence, as mentioned in my September 17, 2020 posting,

From a July 24, 2019 article by Liam Drew for Nature Outlook: The brain,

“It becomes part of you,” Patient 6 said, describing the technology that enabled her, after 45 years of severe epilepsy, to halt her disabling seizures. Electrodes had been implanted on the surface of her brain that would send a signal to a hand-held device when they detected signs of impending epileptic activity. On hearing a warning from the device, Patient 6 knew to take a dose of medication to halt the coming seizure.

“You grow gradually into it and get used to it, so it then becomes a part of every day,” she told Frederic Gilbert, an ethicist who studies brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. “It became me,” she said. [emphasis mine]

Symbiosis is a term, borrowed from ecology, that means an intimate co-existence of two species for mutual advantage. As technologists work towards directly connecting the human brain to computers, it is increasingly being used to describe humans’ potential relationship with artificial intelligence. [emphasis mine]

It’s complicated

For a lot of people these devices are or could be life-changing. At the same time, there are a number of different issues related to implants/prosthetics; the following is not an exhaustive list. As Wolbring notes, issues that we can’t begin to imagine now are likely to emerge as these medical advances become more ubiquitous.

Ability/disability?

Assistive technologies are almost always portrayed as helpful. For example, a cochlear implant gives people without hearing the ability to hear. The assumption is that this is always a good thing—unless you’re a deaf person who wants to define the problem a little differently. Who gets to decide what is good and ‘normal’ and what is desirable?

While the cochlear implant is the most extreme example I can think of, there are variations of these questions throughout the ‘disability’ communities.

Also, as Wolbring notes in his interview with the Technologist.eu, the education system tends to favour technological solutions which don’t take social issues into account. Wolbring cites social justice issues when he mentions failure and obsolescence.

Technical failures and obsolescence

The story, excerpted earlier in this posting, opened with a striking example of a technical failure at an awkward moment; a blind woman depending on her retinal implant loses all sight as she maneuvers through a subway station in New York City.

Aside from being an awful way to find out the company supplying and supporting your implant is in serious financial trouble and can’t offer assistance or repair, the failure offers a preview of what could happen as implants and prosthetics become more commonly used.

Keeping up/fomo (fear of missing out)/obsolescence

It used to be called ‘keeping up with the Joneses, it’s the practice of comparing yourself and your worldly goods to someone else(‘s) and then trying to equal what they have or do better. Usually, people want to have more and better than the mythical Joneses.

These days, the phenomenon (which has been expanded to include social networking) is better known as ‘fomo’ or fear of missing out (see the Fear of missing out Wikipedia entry).

Whatever you want to call it, humanity’s competitive nature can be seen where technology is concerned. When I worked in technology companies, I noticed that hardware and software were sometimes purchased for features that were effectively useless to us. But, not upgrading to a newer version was unthinkable.

Call it fomo or ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, it’s a powerful force and when people (and even companies) miss out or can’t keep up, it can lead to a sense of inferiority in the same way that having an obsolete implant or prosthetic could.

Social consequences

Could there be a neural implant/neuroprosthetic divide? There is already a digital divide (from its Wikipedia entry),

The digital divide is a gap between those who have access to new technology and those who do not … people without access to the Internet and other ICTs [information and communication technologies] are at a socio-economic disadvantage because they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.

After reading Wolbring’s comments, it’s not hard to imagine a neural implant/neuroprosthetic divide with its attendant psychological and social consequences.

What kind of human am I?

There are other issues as noted in my September 17, 2020 posting. I’ve already mentioned ‘patient 6’, the woman who developed a symbiotic relationship with her brain/computer interface. This is how the relationship ended,

… He [Frederic Gilbert, ethicist] is now preparing a follow-up report on Patient 6. The company that implanted the device in her brain to help free her from seizures went bankrupt. The device had to be removed.

… Patient 6 cried as she told Gilbert about losing the device. … “I lost myself,” she said.

“It was more than a device,” Gilbert says. “The company owned the existence of this new person.”

Above human

The possibility that implants will not merely restore or endow someone with ‘standard’ sight or hearing or motion or … but will augment or improve on nature was broached in this May 2, 2013 posting, More than human—a bionic ear that extends hearing beyond the usual frequencies and is one of many in the ‘Human Enhancement’ category on this blog.

More recently, Hugh Herr, an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), leader of the Biomechatronics research group at MIT’s Media Lab, a double amputee, and prosthetic enthusiast, starred in the recent (February 23, 2022) broadcast of ‘Augmented‘ on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) science programme, Nova.

I found ‘Augmented’ a little offputting as it gave every indication of being an advertisement for Herr’s work in the form of a hero’s journey. I was not able to watch more than 10 mins. This preview gives you a pretty good idea of what it was like although the part in ‘Augmented, where he says he’d like to be a cyborg hasn’t been included,

At a guess, there were a few talking heads (taking up from 10%-20% of the running time) who provided some cautionary words to counterbalance the enthusiasm in the rest of the programme. It’s a standard approach designed to give the impression that both sides of a question are being recognized. The cautionary material is usually inserted past the 1/2 way mark while leaving several minutes at the end for returning to the more optimistic material.

In a February 2, 2010 posting I have excerpts from an article featuring quotes from Herr that I still find startling,

Written by Paul Hochman for Fast Company, Bionic Legs, iLimbs, and Other Super-Human Prostheses [ETA March 23, 2022: an updated version of the article is now on Genius.com] delves further into the world where people may be willing to trade a healthy limb for a prosthetic. From the article,

There are many advantages to having your leg amputated.

Pedicure costs drop 50% overnight. A pair of socks lasts twice as long. But Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, goes a step further. “It’s actually unfair,” Herr says about amputees’ advantages over the able-bodied. “As tech advancements in prosthetics come along, amputees can exploit those improvements. They can get upgrades. A person with a natural body can’t.”

Herr is not the only one who favours prosthetics (also from the Hochman article),

This influx of R&D cash, combined with breakthroughs in materials science and processor speed, has had a striking visual and social result: an emblem of hurt and loss has become a paradigm of the sleek, modern, and powerful. Which is why Michael Bailey, a 24-year-old student in Duluth, Georgia, is looking forward to the day when he can amputate the last two fingers on his left hand.

“I don’t think I would have said this if it had never happened,” says Bailey, referring to the accident that tore off his pinkie, ring, and middle fingers. “But I told Touch Bionics I’d cut the rest of my hand off if I could make all five of my fingers robotic.”

But Bailey is most surprised by his own reaction. “When I’m wearing it, I do feel different: I feel stronger. As weird as that sounds, having a piece of machinery incorporated into your body, as a part of you, well, it makes you feel above human.[emphasis mine] It’s a very powerful thing.”

My September 17, 2020 posting touches on more ethical and social issues including some of those surrounding consumer neurotechnologies or brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Unfortunately, I don’t have space for these issues here.

As for Paul Hochman’s article, Bionic Legs, iLimbs, and Other Super-Human Prostheses, now on Genius.com, it has been updated.

Money makes the world go around

Money and business practices have been indirectly referenced (for the most part) up to now in this posting. The February 15, 2022 IEEE Spectrum article and Hochman’s article, Bionic Legs, iLimbs, and Other Super-Human Prostheses, cover two aspects of the money angle.

In the IEEE Spectrum article, a tech start-up company, Second Sight, ran into financial trouble and is acquired by a company that has no plans to develop Second Sight’s core technology. The people implanted with the Argus II technology have been stranded as were ‘patient 6’ and others participating in the clinical trial described in the July 24, 2019 article by Liam Drew for Nature Outlook: The brain mentioned earlier in this posting.

I don’t know anything about the business bankruptcy mentioned in the Drew article but one of the business problems described in the IEEE Spectrum article suggests that Second Sight was founded before answering a basic question, “What is the market size for this product?”

On 18 July 2019, Second Sight sent Argus patients a letter saying it would be phasing out the retinal implant technology to clear the way for the development of its next-generation brain implant for blindness, Orion, which had begun a clinical trial with six patients the previous year. …

“The leadership at the time didn’t believe they could make [the Argus retinal implant] part of the business profitable,” Greenberg [Robert Greenberg, Second Sight co-founder] says. “I understood the decision, because I think the size of the market turned out to be smaller than we had thought.”

….

The question of whether a medical procedure or medicine can be profitable (or should the question be sufficiently profitable?) was referenced in my April 26, 2019 posting in the context of gene editing and personalized medicine

Edward Abrahams, president of the Personalized Medicine Coalition (US-based), advocates for personalized medicine while noting in passing, market forces as represented by Goldman Sachs in his May 23, 2018 piece for statnews.com (Note: A link has been removed),

Goldman Sachs, for example, issued a report titled “The Genome Revolution.” It argues that while “genome medicine” offers “tremendous value for patients and society,” curing patients may not be “a sustainable business model.” [emphasis mine] The analysis underlines that the health system is not set up to reap the benefits of new scientific discoveries and technologies. Just as we are on the precipice of an era in which gene therapies, gene-editing, and immunotherapies promise to address the root causes of disease, Goldman Sachs says that these therapies have a “very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies.”

The ‘Glybera’ story in my July 4, 2019 posting (scroll down about 40% of the way) highlights the issue with “recurring revenue versus chronic therapies,”

Kelly Crowe in a November 17, 2018 article for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news writes about Glybera,

It is one of this country’s great scientific achievements.

“The first drug ever approved that can fix a faulty gene.

It’s called Glybera, and it can treat a painful and potentially deadly genetic disorder with a single dose — a genuine made-in-Canada medical breakthrough.

But most Canadians have never heard of it.

Here’s my summary (from the July 4, 2019 posting),

It cost $1M for a single treatment and that single treatment is good for at least 10 years.

Pharmaceutical companies make their money from repeated use of their medicaments and Glybera required only one treatment so the company priced it according to how much they would have gotten for repeated use, $100,000 per year over a 10 year period. The company was not able to persuade governments and/or individuals to pay the cost

In the end, 31 people got the treatment, most of them received it for free through clinical trials.

For rich people only?

Megan Devlin’s March 8, 2022 article for the Daily Hive announces a major research investment into medical research (Note: A link has been removed),

Vancouver [Canada] billionaire Chip Wilson revealed Tuesday [March 8, 2022] that he has a rare genetic condition that causes his muscles to waste away, and announced he’s spending $100 million on research to find a cure.

His condition is called facio-scapulo-humeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD for short. It progresses rapidly in some people and more slowly in others, but is characterized by progressive muscle weakness starting the the face, the neck, shoulders, and later the lower body.

“I’m out for survival of my own life,” Wilson said.

“I also have the resources to do something about this which affects so many people in the world.”

Wilson hopes the $100 million will produce a cure or muscle-regenerating treatment by 2027.

“This could be one of the biggest discoveries of all time, for humankind,” Wilson said. “Most people lose muscle, they fall, and they die. If we can keep muscle as we age this can be a longevity drug like we’ve never seen before.”

According to rarediseases.org, FSHD affects between four and 10 people out of every 100,000 [emphasis mine], Right now, therapies are limited to exercise and pain management. There is no way to stall or reverse the disease’s course.

Wilson is best known for founding athleisure clothing company Lululemon. He also owns the most expensive home in British Columbia, a $73 million mansion in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood.

Let’s see what the numbers add up to,

4 – 10 people out of 100,000

40 – 100 people out of 1M

1200 – 3,000 people out of 30M (let’s say this is Canada’s population)\

12,000 – 30,000 people out of 300M (let’s say this is the US’s population)

42,000 – 105,000 out of 1.115B (let’s say this is China’s population)

The rough total comes to 55,200 to 138,000 people between three countries with a combined population total of 1.445B. Given how business currently operates, it seems unlikely that any company will want to offer Wilson’s hoped for medical therapy although he and possibly others may benefit from a clinical trial.

Should profit or wealth be considerations?

The stories about the patients with the implants and the patients who need Glybera are heartbreaking and point to a question not often asked when medical therapies and medications are developed. Is the profit model the best choice and, if so, how much profit?

I have no answer to that question but I wish it was asked by medical researchers and policy makers.

As for wealthy people dictating the direction for medical research, I don’t have answers there either. I hope the research will yield applications and/or valuable information for more than Wilson’s disease.

It’s his money after all

Wilson calls his new venture, SolveFSHD. It doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any university or biomedical science organization and it’s not clear how the money will be awarded (no programmes, no application procedure, no panel of experts). There are three people on the team, Eva R. Chin, scientist and executive director, Chip Wilson, SolveFSHD founder/funder, and FSHD patient, and Neil Camarta, engineer, executive (fossil fuels and clean energy), and FSHD patient. There’s also a Twitter feed (presumably for the latest updates): https://twitter.com/SOLVEFSHD.

Perhaps unrelated but intriguing is news about a proposed new building in Kenneth Chan’s March 31, 2022 article for the Daily Hive,

Low Tide Properties, the real estate arm of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson [emphasis mine], has submitted a new development permit application to build a 148-ft-tall, eight-storey, mixed-use commercial building in the False Creek Flats of Vancouver.

The proposal, designed by local architectural firm Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, calls for 236,000 sq ft of total floor area, including 105,000 sq ft of general office space, 102,000 sq ft of laboratory space [emphasis mine], and 5,000 sq ft of ground-level retail space. An outdoor amenity space for building workers will be provided on the rooftop.

[next door] The 2001-built, five-storey building at 1618 Station Street immediately to the west of the development site is also owned by Low Tide Properties [emphasis mine]. The Ferguson, the name of the existing building, contains about 79,000 sq ft of total floor area, including 47,000 sq ft of laboratory space and 32,000 sq ft of general office space. Biotechnology company Stemcell technologies [STEMCELL] Technologies] is the anchor tenant [emphasis mine].

I wonder if this proposed new building will house SolveFSHD and perhaps other FSHD-focused enterprises. The proximity of STEMCELL Technologies could be quite convenient. In any event, $100M will buy a lot (pun intended).

The end

Issues I’ve described here in the context of neural implants/neuroprosthetics and cutting edge medical advances are standard problems not specific to these technologies/treatments:

  • What happens when the technology fails (hopefully not at a critical moment)?
  • What happens when your supplier goes out of business or discontinues the products you purchase from them?
  • How much does it cost?
  • Who can afford the treatment/product? Will it only be for rich people?
  • Will this technology/procedure/etc. exacerbate or create new social tensions between social classes, cultural groups, religious groups, races, etc.?

Of course, having your neural implant fail suddenly in the middle of a New York City subway station seems a substantively different experience than having your car break down on the road.

There are, of course, there are the issues we can’t yet envision (as Wolbring notes) and there are issues such as symbiotic relationships with our implants and/or feeling that you are “above human.” Whether symbiosis and ‘implant/prosthetic superiority’ will affect more than a small number of people or become major issues is still to be determined.

There’s a lot to be optimistic about where new medical research and advances are concerned but I would like to see more thoughtful coverage in the media (e.g., news programmes and documentaries like ‘Augmented’) and more thoughtful comments from medical researchers.

Of course, the biggest issue I’ve raised here is about the current business models for health care products where profit is valued over people’s health and well-being. it’s a big question and I don’t see any definitive answers but the question put me in mind of this quote (from a September 22, 2020 obituary for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irene Monroe for Curve),

Ginsburg’s advocacy for justice was unwavering and showed it, especially with each oral dissent. In another oral dissent, Ginsburg quoted a familiar Martin Luther King Jr. line, adding her coda:” ‘The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’” but only “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.” …

Martin Luther King Jr. popularized and paraphrased the quote (from a January 18, 2018 article by Mychal Denzel Smith for Huffington Post),

His use of the quote is best understood by considering his source material. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” is King’s clever paraphrasing of a portion of a sermon delivered in 1853 by the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1810, Parker studied at Harvard Divinity School and eventually became an influential transcendentalist and minister in the Unitarian church. In that sermon, Parker said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

I choose to keep faith that people will get the healthcare products they need and that all of us need to keep working at making access more fair.

Gold glue?

If you’re hoping for gold flecks in your glue, this is not going to satisfy you, given that it’s all at the nanoscale. An August 7, 2019 news item on Nanowerk briefly describes this gold glue (Note: A link has been removed),

It has long been known that gold can be used to do things that philosophers have never even dreamed of. The Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow has confirmed the existence of ‘gold glue’: bonds involving gold atoms, capable of permanently bonding protein rings. Skilfully used by an international team of scientists, the bonds have made it possible to construct molecular nanocages with a structure so far unparalleled in nature or even in mathematics (Nature, “An ultra-stable gold-coordinated protein cage displaying reversible assembly”).

Caption: The ‘impossible’ sphere, i.e. a molecular nanocage of 24 protein rings, each of which has an 11-sided structure. The rings are connected by bonds with the participation of gold atoms, here marked in yellow. Depending on their position in the structure, not all gold atoms have to be used to attach adjacent proteins (an unused gold atom is marked in red). Credit: Source: UJ, IFJ PAN

An August 6, 2019 Polish Academy of Sciences press release (also on EurekAlert but published August 7, 2019), which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

The world of science has been interested in molecular cages for years. Not without reason. Chemical molecules, including those that would under normal conditions enter into chemical reactions, can be enclosed within their empty interiors. The particles of the enclosed compound, separated by the walls of the cage from the environment, have nothing to bond with. These cages can be therefore be used, for example, to transport drugs safely into a cancer cell, only releasing the drug when they are inside it.

Molecular cages are polyhedra made up of smaller ‘bricks’, usually protein molecules. The bricks can’t be of any shape. For example, if we wanted to build a molecular polyhedron using only objects with the outline of an equilateral triangle, geometry would limit us to only three solid figures: a tetrahedron, an octahedron or an icosahedron. So far, there have been no other structural possibilities.

“Fortunately, Platonic idealism is not a dogma of the physical world. If you accept certain inaccuracies in the solid figure being constructed, you can create structures with shapes that are not found in nature, what’s more, with very interesting properties,” says Dr. Tomasz Wrobel from the Cracow Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN).

Dr. Wrobel is one of the members of an international team of researchers who have recently carried out the ‘impossible’: they built a cage similar in shape to a sphere out of eleven-walled proteins. The main authors of this spectacular success are scientists from the group of Prof. Jonathan Heddle from the Malopolska Biotechnology Centre of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and the Japanese RIKEN Institute in Wako. The work described in Nature magazine took place with the participation of researchers from universities in Osaka and Tsukuba (Japan), Durham (Great Britain), Waterloo (Canada) and other research centres.

Each of the walls of the new nanocages was formed by a protein ring from which eleven cysteine molecules stuck out at regular intervals. It was to the sulphur atom found in each cysteine molecule that the ‘glue’, i.e. the gold atom, was planned to be attached. In the appropriate conditions, it could bind with one more sulphur atom, in the cysteine of a next ring. In this way a permanent chemical bond would be formed between the two rings. But would the gold atom under these conditions really be able to form a bond between the rings?

“In the Spectroscopic Imaging Laboratory of IFJ PAS we used Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to show that in the samples provided to us with the test nanocages, the gold really did form bonds with sulphur atoms in cysteines. In other words, in a difficult, direct measurement, we proved that gold ‘glue’ for bonding protein rings in cages really does exist,” explains Dr. Wrobel.

Each gold atom can be treated as a stand-alone clip that makes it possible to attach another ring. The road to the ‘impossible’ begins when we realize that we don’t always have to use all of the clips! So, although all the rings of the new nanocages are physically the same, depending on their place in the structure they connect with their neighbours with a different number of gold atoms, and thus function as polygons with different numbers of vertices. 24 nanocage walls presented by the researchers were held together by 120 gold atoms. The outer diameter of the cages was 22 nanometres and the inner diameter was 16 nm.

Using gold atoms as a binder for nanocages is also important due to its possible applications. In earlier molecular structures, proteins were glued together using many weak chemical bonds. The complexity of the bonds and their similarity to the bonds responsible for the existence of the protein rings themselves did not allow for precise control over the decomposition of the cages. This is not the case in the new structures. On the one hand, gold-bonded nanocages are chemically and thermally stable (for example, they withstand hours of boiling in water). On the other hand, however, gold bonds are sensitive to an increase in acidity. By its increase, the nanocage can be decomposed in a controlled way and the contents can be released into the environment. Since the acidity within cells is greater than outside them, gold-bonded nanocages are ideal for biomedical applications.

The ‘impossible’ nanocage is the presentation of a qualitatively new approach to the construction of molecular cages, with gold atoms in the role of loose clips. The demonstrated flexibility of the gold bonds will make it possible in the future to create nanocages with sizes and features precisely tailored to specific needs.

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

An ultra-stable gold-coordinated protein cage displaying reversible assembly by Ali D. Malay, Naoyuki Miyazaki, Artur Biela, Soumyananda Chakraborti, Karolina Majsterkiewicz, Izabela Stupka, Craig S. Kaplan, Agnieszka Kowalczyk, Bernard M. A. G. Piette, Georg K. A. Hochberg, Di Wu, Tomasz P. Wrobel, Adam Fineberg, Manish S. Kushwah, Mitja Kelemen, Primož Vavpetič, Primož Pelicon, Philipp Kukura, Justin L. P. Benesch, Kenji Iwasaki & Jonathan G. Heddle Nature volume 569, pages438–442 (2019) Issue Date: 16 May 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1185-4 Published online: 08 May 2019

This paper is behind a paywall.

Zebras, Turing patterns, and the Polish Academy of Sciences

A Feb. 6, 2015 news item on Azonano profiles some research from the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physical Chemistry (IPC PAS),

In the world of single atoms and molecules governed by chaotic fluctuations, is the spontaneous formation of Turing patterns possible – the same ones that are responsible for the irregular yet periodic shapes of the stripes on zebras’ bodies? A Polish-Danish team of physicists has for the first time demonstrated that such a process can not only occur, but can also be used for potentially very interesting applications.

A Feb. 6, 2015 IPC PAS press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes Turing’s patterns and the research in more detail,

Everyone is familiar with a zebra’s stripes, but not everyone knows that these are the manifestations of chemical reactions taking place according to a process first described by the famous British mathematician Alan Turing, the creator of the basics of today’s computer science. Turing patterns, most commonly displayed in chemistry as periodic changes in the concentration of chemical substances, have hitherto only been observed in dimensions of microns or larger. It seemed that on a smaller scale – at the nanoscale, where random fluctuations rule the movement of single atoms and molecules – these patterns do not have the right to form spontaneously.

“So far, no-one has even studied the possibility of the formation of Turing patterns by single atoms or molecules. However, our results show that Turing nanostructures may exist. And since this is the case, we will be able to find very specific applications for them in nanotechnology and materials science,” says Dr. Bogdan Nowakowski from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw, one of the physicists in the Polish-Danish team that has recently conducted computer simulations and theoretical analyses on Turing nanostructures.

Turing patterns occur in dynamic systems far from a state of equilibrium. Under the appropriate conditions there may then be a feedback mechanism: chemical reactions taking place may influence the concentration of their own components, which in turn may change the course of the reaction itself. The process leads to the formation of periodic, but not necessarily monotonously regular patterns. In nature, these patterns play an important role, particularly in the formation of young organisms (morphogenesis). For example, in the initial phases of the development of vertebrate embryos, this is how periodic segments, somites, are formed in the dorsal mesoderm, which are later converted into, among others, vertebrae, components of the spine.

“In our studies we considered very simple reactions of two model substances with different rates of diffusion. Computer simulations carried out using molecular dynamics, in collaboration with Dr. Jesper Hansen from the Danish University of Roskilde, gave rise to a very interesting picture,” says Dr. Piotr Dziekan (IPC PAS).

Clear and permanent patterns formed spontaneously in the simulated systems (of nanometer dimensions) – periodic changes in the density of molecules, which remained stable despite the destructive influence of fluctuations. It turned out that one cycle of concentration changes within the Turing pattern could appear on a length of just 20 molecules.

For Turing nanostructures to be formed, chemical reactions satisfying certain conditions have to take place between the chemical substances. This requirement severely reduces the number of compounds that can participate in the process and, consequently, severely limits the potential applications. However, the simulations carried out by the Polish-Danish team suggest that Turing nanostructures can quite easily be transferred to other compounds, not participating directly in the main reaction.

“Turing nanostructures can only arise with carefully selected chemical substances. Fortunately, the pattern formed by them can be ‘imprinted’ in the concentration of other chemical compounds. For the pattern to be copied, these compounds must fulfill only two simple conditions: they must bind to one of the reactants of the main reaction and diffuse slowly,” explains Dr. Dziekan.

This work is theoretical as the final paragraph of the press release intimates,

The possibility of forming Turing patterns on nanometer distances opens the door to interesting applications, particularly in the field of surface modification of materials. By skillfully selecting the chemical composition of the reagents and the conditions in which the reaction occurs, it could be possible to form Turing patterns in two dimensions (on the same surface of the material), or three (also in the space adjacent to the surface). The formed patterns could then be fixed, e.g. by photopolymerisation, thereby obtaining a permanent, stable, extended surface with a complex, periodic structure.

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

Nanoscale Turing structures by Piotr Dziekan. J. S. Hansen, and Bogdan Nowakowski. J. Chem. Phys. 141, 124106 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4895907

This paper is behind a paywall.

Martini with your salad? an update on Janus particles and emulsification

Close to a year since I first posted about this research (my July 8, 2013 posting about oil, electricity, and emulsification), scientists have published their latest work on using electricity to control nanoparticles. A June 26, 2014 Polish Academy of Sciences press release (also on EurekAlert) provides this summary,

Everything depends on how you look at them. Looking from one side you will see one face; and when looking from the opposite side – you will see a different one. So appear Janus capsules, miniature, hollow structures, in different fragments composed of different micro- and nanoparticles. Theoreticians were able to design models of such capsules, but a real challenge was to produce them. Now, Janus capsules can be produced easily and at low cost.

Before describing the process for producing Janus capsules, an explanation of Janus (a Roman god) and the problem the scientists were trying to solve (from the press release),

Janus, the old Roman god of beginnings and transitions, attracted believers’ attention with his two faces, each looking to different direction of the world. Janus capsules – ‘bubbles’ made up of two shells stuck one another, each composed of micro- or nanoparticles of different properties – have been for some time attracting the researchers’ attention. They see in the capsules an excellent tool for transporting drugs and a vehicle leading to innovative materials. To have, however, Janus capsules generally accessible, efficient methods for their mass production must be developed. An important step in this direction is the achievement of researchers from the Norwegian and French research institutions and the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw, reported recently in one of the most reputable scientific journals: “Nature Communications”.

At present, it is not a problem to produce Janus spheres – round, entirely filled micro- and nanoobjects with one part having different properties than the other. Such spheres can be, for instance, produced by sticking together two drops of different substances. After merging, the new drop requires a sufficiently fast fixation only, e.g., by cooling it down or initiating polymerisation of its materials. For instance, Janus spheres are particles with white and black halves, used for image generation in electrophoretic displays incorporated in e-book reading devices.

“Janus capsules differ from Janus spheres: the former are hollow structures, and their partially permeable shell is made of colloidal particles. How to make such a ‘two-faced bubble’ using micro- and nanoparticles? Many researchers reflect on the problem. We proposed a really not complicated solution”, says Dr Zbigniew Rozynek (IPC PAS [Institute of Physical Chemistry Polish Academy of Sciences]), who experimentally studied Janus capsules during his postdoctoral training at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

Here’s an illustration the researchers have provided,

Caption: These are typical capsules (mainly Janus capsules) obtained with the method described in the press release of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Credit: adopted from Nat. Commun. 5, 3945 (2014)

Caption: These are typical capsules (mainly Janus capsules) obtained with the method described in the press release of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Credit: adopted from Nat. Commun. 5, 3945 (2014)

Here’s how the researchers solved their problem (from the press release),

In their experiments, an international team of researchers produced Janus capsules with drops of single millilitres in volume. The drops were coated, for instance, with polystyrene or glass nanoparticles with diameters of about 500 nm (billionth parts of a meter) or 1000 nm, respectively. Also differently coloured polyethylene particles were used.

The experiments were performed with oil drops suspended in another oil. To a so prepared environment micro- or nanoparticles of one type were placed and deposited on the surface of a selected drop. Then, particles of another type were brought to the surface of the second drop. Due to the action of capillary forces, the particles were durably kept on the surfaces of both drops, being approximately uniformly distributed.

When an external electric field was turned on, microflows were induced inside and outside the drops. The microflows transported the particles toward the electric ‘equator’. In this step, the packing of colloidal particles could be controlled by shaking the drops in a slowly alternating electric field. The way how the particles are packed is an important factor, as it determines the number and size of pores of the future capsule, and consequently the capsule permeability.

The microflows around the electric equators of the drops resulted in formation of a ring-shaped ribbon, composed of densely packed particles , whereas both electric ‘poles’ became particles-free regions. At the same time, the poles of each drop were acquiring opposite electric charges.

Opposite electric charges attract one another, so the drops with charged poles were heading to each other. In this step, the only thing to do was to convince both drops not only to adjoin with their poles, but actually to merge. For that purpose the long-known electrocoalescence was used: the drops were stimulated for faster merging by an electric field. Finally the drops electrocoalesced, resulting in the formation of a Janus capsule. Due to a dense packing of particles within the capsule the particles of different types virtually did not mix with each other.

It’s like the famous James Bond’s martini: it was always to be shaken, not stirred“, laughs Dr Rozynek. [emphasis mine]

The ultimate capsule appearance was determined by the number of particles deposited on the surfaces of initial drops. If the particles covered both drops with a uniform film, extending almost to the poles, the coalescence resulted in a non-spherical structure. When empty areas around the poles were suitably larger, the Janus capsules acquired a spherical shape. Finally, if the ribbons around the equators of the initial drops were narrow, the coalescence resulted in formation of a structure, which could be called a Janus ring.

The rings with two parts composed of two different types of particles provide interesting opportunities. They can be further stuck each other and produce more complex striped structures. The capsules could be then composed of alternately placed strips of particles, with each strip having different properties than its neighbours.

Janus capsules enable encapsulation of microobjects, nanoparticles or molecules, which must be protected against the environment because of their sensitivity or reactivity. Different properties of both capsule parts make it easier to control the movement of the capsules and the release of their contents. In view of these factors, Janus capsules may find numerous applications. The proposed method for producing the Janus capsules is potentially of great importance for pharmaceutical, dye or food industries, as well as for the development of materials engineering and medicine.

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

Electroformation of Janus and patchy capsules by Zbigniew Rozynek, Alexander Mikkelsen, Paul Dommersnes, & Jon Otto Fossum. Nature Communications 5, Article number: 3945 doi:10.1038/ncomms4945 Published 23 May 2014

This is an open access paper,

Carbon dioxide as a source for new nanomaterials

Polish researchers have made a startling suggestion (from a Jan. 23, 2014 news item on Nanowerk),

In common perception, carbon dioxide is just a greenhouse gas, one of the major environmental problems of mankind. For Warsaw chemists CO2 became, however, something else: a key element of reactions allowing for creation of nanomaterials with unprecedented properties.

In reaction with carbon dioxide, appropriately designed chemicals allowed researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw and the Faculty of Chemistry, Warsaw University of Technology, (WUT) for production of unprecedented nanomaterials.

Here’s an image the researchers use to illustrate their work,

Yellow tennis balls, spatially integrated in an adamant-like structure, symbolise crystal lattice of the microporous material resulting from self-assembly of nanoclusters. Orange balls imitate gas molecules that can adsorb in this material. The presentation is performed by Katarzyna Sołtys, a doctoral student from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. (Source: IPC PAS, Grzegorz Krzyżewski).

Yellow tennis balls, spatially integrated in an adamant-like structure, symbolise crystal lattice of the microporous material resulting from self-assembly of nanoclusters. Orange balls imitate gas molecules that can adsorb in this material. The presentation is performed by Katarzyna Sołtys, a doctoral student from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. (Source: IPC PAS, Grzegorz Krzyżewski).

The Jan. 23, 2014 IPC news release, which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a natural component of Earth’s atmosphere. It is the most abundant carbon-based building block, and is involved in the synthesis of glucose, an energy carrier and building unit of paramount importance for living organisms.

“Carbon dioxide has been for years used in industrial synthesis of polymers. On the other hand, there has been very few research papers reporting fabrication of inorganic functional materials using CO2”, says Kamil Sokołowski, a doctoral student in IPC PAS.

Prof. Lewiński’s [Janusz Lewiński (IPC PAS, WUT)] group has shown that appropriately designed precursor compounds in reaction with carbon dioxide lead to fabrication of a microporous material (with pore diameters below 2 nm) resulting from self-assembly of luminescent nanoclusters. Novel microporous material, composed of building blocks with zinc carbonate core encapsulated in appropriately designed organic shell (hydroxyquinoline ligands), is highly luminescent, with photoluminescence quantum yield significantly higher than those of classical fluorescent compounds used in state-of-the-art OLEDs.

“Using carbon dioxide as a building block we were able to construct a highly porous and really highly luminescent material. Can it be used for construction of luminescent diodes or sensing devices? The discovery is new, the research work on the novel material is in progress, but we are deeply convinced that the answer is: yes”, says Sokołowski.

Already now it can be said that the novel material enjoys considerable interest. Polish and international patent applications were filed for the invention and the implementation work in cooperation with a joint venture company is in progress.

The design of precursors was inspired by nature, in particular by the binding of carbon dioxide in enzymatic systems of carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme responsible for fast metabolism of CO2 in human body. Effective enzyme activity is based on its active centre, where a hydroxyzinc (ZnOH) type reaction system is located.

“A hydroxyzinc reaction system occurs also in molecules of alkylzinc compounds, designed by us and used for fixation of carbon dioxide”, explains Sokołowski and continues: “These compounds are of particular interest for us, because in addition to hydroxyl group they contain also a reactive metal-carbon bond. It means that both the first and the second reaction system can participate in consecutive chemical transformations of such precursors”.

The research related to the chemistry of alkylhydroxyzinc compounds has an over 150 years of history and its roots are directly connected to the birth of organometallic chemistry. It was, however, only in 2011 and 2012 when Prof. Lewiński’s group has presented the first examples of stable alkylhydroxyzinc compounds obtained as a result of rationally designed synthesis.

The strategy for materials synthesis using carbon dioxide and appropriate alkylhydroxyzinc precursors, discovered by the researchers from Warsaw, seems to be a versatile tool for production of various functional materials. Depending on the composition of the reagents and the process conditions, a mesoporous material (with pore diameter from 2 to 50 nm) composed of zinc carbonate nanoparticles or multinuclear zinc nanocapsules for prospective applications in supramolecular chemistry can be obtained in addition to the material described above.

Further research of Prof. Lewiński’s group has shown that the mesoporous materials based on ZnCO3-nanoparticles can be transformed into zinc oxide (ZnO) aerogels. Mesoporous materials made of ZnO nanoparticles with extended surface can be used as catalytic fillings, allowing for and accelerating reactions of various gaseous reagents. Other potential applications are related to semiconducting properties of zinc oxide. That’s why the novel materials can be used in future in photovoltaic cells or as a major component of semiconductor sensing devices.

Good luck to the researchers as they find ways to turn a greenhouse gas into something useful.

Batteries that breathe

Researchers at the Polish Academy of Sciences Institute of Physical Chemistry have constructed a biobattery that breathes. The device could be used in medication applications as the researchers note in the Mar. 7, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

People are increasingly taking advantage of devices supporting various functions of our bodies. Today they include cardiac pacemakers or hearing aids; tomorrow it will be contact lenses with automatically changing focal length or computer-controlled displays generating images directly in the eye. None of these devices will work if not coupled to an efficient and long-lasting power supply source. The best solution seems to be miniaturised biofuel cells consuming substances naturally occurring in human body or in its direct surrounding.

Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw developed an efficient electrode for the use in construction of biofuel cells or zinc-oxygen biobatteries. After installation in a cell, the new biocathode generates a voltage, during many hours, that is higher than that obtained in existing power sources of similar design. The most interesting is that the device is air-breathing: it works at full efficiency when it can take oxygen directly from the air.

Here’s some of the reasoning which underlies this project’s approach to the challenge of creating better batteries for implantable medical devices (from the news release),

Common batteries and rechargeable batteries are unsuitable to power implants inside the human body as they use strong bases or acids. These agents can on no account get into the body. The battery housing must be therefore absolutely tight. But in line with reducing the battery size, it must be better isolated. In extreme cases, the weight of the housing of a common, miniaturised battery would be even a few dozen times greater than the weight of the battery’s active components that generate electricity. And here biofuel cells offer an essential advantage: they do not require housing. To get electricity, it is enough to insert the electrodes into the body.

“One of the most popular experiments in electrochemistry is to make a battery by sticking appropriately selected electrodes into a potato. We are doing something similar, the difference is that we are focusing on biofuel cells and the improvement of the cathode. And, of course, to have the whole project working, we’d rather replace the potato with… a human being”, says Dr Martin Jönsson-Niedziółka (IPC PAS).

Here’s what the researchers decided to do,

In the experiments, Dr Jönsson-Niedziółka’s group uses zinc-oxygen batteries. The principle of their operation is not new. The batteries constructed in this way had been popular before the time of alkaline power sources came. “At present, many laboratories work on glucose-oxygen biofuel cells. In the best case they generate a voltage of 0.6-0.7 V. A zinc-oxygen biobattery with our cathode is able to generate 1.75 V for many hours.”, says Adrianna Złoczewska, a PhD student at the IPC PAS, whose research has been supported under the International PhD Projects Programme of the Foundation for Polish Science.

The main component of the biocathode developed at the IPC PAS is an enzyme surrounded by carbon nanotubes and encapsulated in a porous structure – a silicate matrix deposited on an oxygen permeable membrane. “Our group had been working for many years on techniques that were necessary to construct the cathode using enzymes, carbon nanotubes and silicate matrices”, stresses Prof. Marcin Opałło (IPC PAS).

An electrode so constructed is installed in a wall of a small container. To have the biofuel cell working, it is enough to pour an electrolyte (here: a solution containing hydrogen ions) and insert the zinc electrode in the electrolyte. The pores in the silicate matrix enable oxygen supply from the air and H+ ions from the solution to active centres of the enzyme, where oxygen reduction takes place. Carbon nanotubes facilitate transport of electrons from the surface of the semipermeable membrane.

A cell with the new biocathode is able to supply power with a voltage of 1.6 V, for a minimum one and a half of a week. The cell efficiency decreases with time, likely because of gradual deactivation of the enzyme on the biocathode. “Here not everything is dependent on us, but on the progress in biotechnology. The lifetime of a biofuel cells with our biocathode could be significantly prolonged, if the enzyme regeneration processes are successfully developed”, says Dr Jönsson-Niedziółka.

In the experiments carried out so far, a stack of four batteries connected in series successfully powered a lamp composed of two LEDs. Before, however, the biofuel cells based on the design developed at the IPC PAS get popularised, the researchers must solve the problem of relatively low electric power that is common to all types of biofuel cells.

I have mentioned similar projects in two previous postings, long ago. The first project was a vampire battery (a battery for implantable medical devices that powers itself with blood) mentioned in an April 3, 2009 posting. The second project was to power batteries from harvested mechanical energy from heart beats, breathing, vocal cord vibrations, and more and that was mentioned in a July 12, 2010 posting.