#Computing at the speed of light University of Utah engineers have taken a step forward in creating the next generation of computers
and mobile devices capable of speeds millions of times faster than current machines. The Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter--the smallest on record--for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information.
The device brings researchers closer to producing silicon photonic chips that compute and shuttle data with light instead of electrons.
Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon and colleagues describe their invention today in the journal Nature Photonics Silicon photonics could significantly increase the power and speed of machines such as supercomputers
data center servers and the specialized computers that direct autonomous cars and drones with collision detection. Eventually, the technology could reach home computers
and mobile devices and improve applications from gaming to video streaming.""Light is the fastest thing you can use to transmit information,
"says Menon.""But that information has to be converted to electrons when it comes into your laptop.
In that conversion, you're slowing things down. The vision is to do everything in light.""Photons of light carry information over the Internet through fiber-optic networks.
But once a data stream reaches a home or office destination, the photons of light must be converted to electrons before a router
or computer can handle the information. That bottleneck could be eliminated if the data stream remained as light within computer processors."
"With all light, computing can eventually be millions of times faster, "says Menon. To help do that, the U engineers created a much smaller form of a polarization beamsplitter
(which looks somewhat like a barcode) on top of a silicon chip that can split guided incoming light into its two components.
Before, such a beamsplitter was over 100 by 100 microns. Thanks to a new algorithm for designing the splitter,
Menon's team has shrunk it to 2. 4 by 2. 4 microns, or one-fiftieth the width of a human hair and close to the limit of what is physically possible.
The beamsplitter would be just one of a multitude of passive devices placed on a silicon chip to direct light waves in different ways.
By shrinking them down in size, researchers will be able to cram millions of these devices on a single chip.
Potential advantages go beyond processing speed. The Utah team's design would be cheap to produce
because it uses existing fabrication techniques for creating silicon chips. And because photonic chips shuttle photons instead of electrons,
mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets built with this technology would consume less power, have longer battery life
and generate less heat than existing mobile devices. The first supercomputers using silicon photonics--already under development at companies such as Intel
and IBM--will use hybrid processors that remain partly electronic. Menon believes his beamsplitter could be used in those computers in about three years.
Data centers that require faster connections between computers also could implement the technology soon, he says s
#What makes cancer cells spread? New device offers clues (Nanowerk News) Why do some cancer cells break away from a tumor
and travel to distant parts of the body? A team of oncologists and engineers from the University of Michigan teamed up to help understand this crucial question.
Cancer becomes deadly when it spreads, or metastasizes. Not all cells have the same ability to travel through the body,
but researchers don't understand why. In a paper published in Scientific Reports("Single-cell Migration Chip for Chemotaxis-based Microfluidic Selection of Heterogeneous Cell Populations),
"researchers describe a new device that is able to sort cells based on their ability to move.
The researchers were then able to take the sorted cells that were highly mobile and begin to analyze them on a molecular level."
"People have used microfluidic devices before to look at the movement of cells, but the story typically ended there.
We developed a device that separates the mobile cells and allows us to determine the gene expression of those highly mobile cells in comparison to the less mobile ones.
By studying these differences in live cells, we hope to gain an understanding of what makes some cancer cells able to spread to other areas of the body,
"says study co-lead author Steven G. Allen, an M d.-Ph d. student in the University of Michigan Medical school's Medical scientist Training program.
The highly mobile cells are believed to be the more aggressive cells that cause metastases. By understanding how those cells tick
researchers believe they can develop targeted treatments to try to prevent metastasis."Using advanced micro-fabrication technologies,
we can create micro-structures comparable to the size of cells. Living cells can then be manipulated on-chip at single-cell resolution.
Using this technology, we can investigate the differences among individual cancer cells, while conventional approaches can study only the collective average behaviors,
"says study co-lead author Yu-Chih Chen, a postdoctoral researcher in Electrical engineering and Computer science at the University of Michigan College of Engineering.
The differences in individual cancer cells are a key aspect of how cancer evolves becomes resistant to current therapies or recurs."
"A primary tumor is not what kills patients. Metastases are what kill patients. Understanding which cells are likely to metastasize can help us direct more targeted therapies to patients,
"says co-senior study author Sofia D. Merajver, M d.,Ph d.,scientific director of the breast oncology program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The researchers believe this type of device might some day help doctors understand an individual patient's cancer.
Which cells in this patient's tumor are really causing havoc? Is there a large population of aggressive cells?
Are there specific markers or variants on those individual cells that could be targeted with treatment?"
"This work demonstrates an elegant approach to the study of cancer cell metastasis by combining expertise in engineering
and biology,"says study co-senior author Euisik Yoon, Ph d.,professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biomedical engineering and director of the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility at the U-M College of Engineering."
"In past decades, engineers have developed biological tools with better resolution, higher sensitivity, selectivity and higher throughput,
"Yoon adds.""However, without compelling applications, these engineering tools have little practical relevance. The goal of our lab is to develop tools that can be disseminated widely to the biology community to eventually impact clinical care for patients."
"In this work, extensive studies were performed on cell lines representing various types of cancer. The new device was designed to trace how cells move, sorting individual cells by their movement.
It has a series of choke points that mimic the lymphatic systems in which cancer cells typically travel.
Unlike other similar devices, in this case the captured and sorted cells can be harvested live for further study
and analysis. In a test using aggressive metastatic breast cancer cells, the researchers were able to sort the cells based on their motion,
collect the sorted cells and send them through the device again. The cells maintained the same highly mobile characteristic upon repeated testing.
The researchers also found that the more mobile cells had the characteristics and appearance under the microscope of metastatic cells and expressed significantly higher levels of markers associated with metastatic cancer."
"Understanding specific differences that lead some cancer cells to leave the primary tumor and seed metastases is of great benefit to develop
and test anti-metastatic strategies, "Merajver says. The device needs further testing and validation before it can begin to influence clinical care e
#Scientists print low cost radio frequency antenna with graphene ink (Nanowerk News) Scientists have moved graphene--the incredibly strong and conductive single-atom-thick sheet of carbon--a significant step along the path
Researchers from the University of Manchester, together with BGT Materials Limited, a graphene manufacturer in the United kingdom, have printed a radio frequency antenna using compressed graphene ink.
The antenna performed well enough to make it practical for use in radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and wireless sensors,
the antenna is flexible, environmentally friendly and could be cheaply mass-produced. The researchers present their results in the journal Applied Physics Letters,
from AIP Publishing("Binder-free highly conductive graphene laminate for low cost printed radio frequency applications")."These scanning electron microscope images show the graphene ink after it was deposited
and dried (a) and after it was compressed (b). Compression makes the graphene nanoflakes more dense,
which improves the electrical conductivity of the laminate. Image: Xianjun Huang, et al.//University of Manchester) The study demonstrates that printable graphene is now ready for commercial use in low-cost radio frequency applications,
said Zhirun Hu, a researcher in the School of Electrical and Electronic engineering at the University of Manchester."
"The point is that graphene is no longer just a scientific wonder. It will bring many new applications to our daily life very soon,"added Kostya S. Novoselov, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester, who coordinated the project.
Graphene Gets Inked Since graphene was isolated first and tested in 2004, researchers have striven to make practical use of its amazing electrical and mechanical properties.
One of the first commercial products manufactured from graphene was conductive ink, which can be used to print circuits and other electronic components.
Graphene ink is generally low cost and mechanically flexible advantages it has over other types of conductive ink,
such as solutions made from metal nanoparticles. To make the ink, graphene flakes are mixed with a solvent,
Graphene ink with binders usually conducts electricity better than binder-free ink, but only after the binder material,
because the high temperatures destroy materials like paper or plastic. The University of Manchester research team
together with BGT Materials Limited, found a way to increase the conductivity of graphene ink without resorting to a binder.
They accomplished this by first printing and drying the ink, and then compressing it with a roller,
similar to the way new pavement is compressed with a road roller. Compressing the ink increased its conductivity by more than 50 times,
which enabled efficient radio frequency radiation, was one of the most exciting aspects of the experiment,
Paving the Way to Antennas, Wireless Sensors, and More The researchers tested their compressed graphene laminate by printing a graphene antenna onto a piece of paper.
The antenna measured approximately 14 centimeters long, and 3. 5 millimeter across and radiated radio frequency power effectively,
said Xianjun Huang, who is the first author of the paper and a Phd candidate in the Microwave and Communcations Group in the School of Electrical and Electronic engineering.
Printing electronics onto cheap, flexible materials like paper and plastic could mean that wireless technology,
like RFID tags that currently transmit identifying info on everything from cattle to car parts,
could become even more ubiquitous. Most commercial RFID tags are made from metals like aluminium and copper,
Huang said, expensive materials with complicated fabrication processes that increase the cost.""Graphene based RFID tags can significantly reduce the cost thanks to a much simpler process and lower material cost,
"Huang said. The University of Manchester and BGT Materials Limited team has plans to further develop graphene enabled RFID tags,
as well as sensors and wearable electronics s
#Printing 3-D graphene structures for tissue engineering Ever since single-layer graphene burst onto the science scene in 2004,
the possibilities for the promising material have seemed nearly endless. With its high electrical conductivity, ability to store energy,
and ultra-strong and lightweight structure, graphene has potential for many applications in electronics, energy, the environment,
and even medicine. Now a team of Northwestern University researchers has found a way to print three-dimensional structures with graphene nanoflakes.
The fast and efficient method could open up new opportunities for using graphene printed scaffolds regenerative engineering and other electronic or medical applications.
Led by Ramille Shah assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern's Mccormick School of engineering and of surgery in the Feinberg School of medicine,
and her postdoctoral fellow Adam Jakus, the team developed a novel graphene-based ink that can be used to print large, robust 3-D structures."
"People have tried to print graphene before, "Shah said.""But it's been a mostly polymer composite with graphene making up less than 20 percent of the volume."
"With a volume so meager, those inks are unable to maintain many of graphene's celebrated properties.
But adding higher volumes of graphene flakes to the mix in these ink systems typically results in printed structures too brittle and fragile to manipulate.
Shah's ink is the best of both worlds. At 60-70 percent graphene, it preserves the material's unique properties,
including its electrical conductivity. And it's flexible and robust enough to print robust macroscopic structures.
The ink's secret lies in its formulation: the graphene flakes are mixed with a biocompatible elastomer
and quickly evaporating solvents.""It's a liquid ink, "Shah explained.""After the ink is extruded,
The presence of the other solvents and the interaction with the specific polymer binder chosen also has a significant contribution to its resulting flexibility and properties.
"Supported by a Google Gift and a Mccormick Research Catalyst Award, the research is described in the paper"Three-dimensional Printing Of high-Content Graphene Scaffolds for Electronic and Biomedical Applications","published in the April
Mark Hersam, the Bette and Neison Harris Chair in Teaching Excellence, professor of materials science and engineering at Mccormick, served as coauthor.
An expert in biomaterials, Shah said 3-D printed graphene scaffolds could play a role in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine as well as in electronic devices.
so it could be used for biodegradable sensors and medical implants. Shah said the biocompatible elastomer
and graphene's electrical conductivity most likely contributed to the scaffold's biological success."Cells conduct electricity inherently--especially neurons,
"Shah said.""So if they're on a substrate that can help conduct that signal,
and her graduate student Alexandra Rutz completed earlier in the year to develop more cell-compatible, water-based, printable gels.
"We've expanded that biomaterial tool box to be able to optimize more mimetic engineered tissue constructs using 3-D printing
The new findings using a layer of one-atom-thick graphene deposited on top of a similar 2-D layer of a material called hexagonal boron nitride (hbn) are published in the journal Nano Letters("Tunable Lightatter
"The work is authored co by MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang and graduate student Anshuman Kumar,
and their co-authors at IBM T. J. Watson Research center, Hong kong Polytechnic University, and the University of Minnesota.
Although the two materials are structurally similar both composed of hexagonal arrays of atoms that form two-dimensional sheets they each interact with light quite differently.
Many researchers see improved interconnection of optical and electronic components as a path to more efficient computation and imaging systems.
Light interaction with graphene produces particles called plasmons while light interacting with hbn produces phonons.
the plasmons and phonons can couple, producing a strong resonance. The properties of the graphene allow precise control over light,
Phaedon Avouris, a researcher at IBM and co-author of the paper, says, he combination of these two materials provides a unique system that allows the manipulation of optical processes.
to create tiny optical waveguides, about 20 nanometers in size the same size range as the smallest features that can now be produced in microchips.
This could lead to chips that combine optical and electronic components in a single device, with far lower losses than when such devices are made separately and then interconnected,
they say. Co-author Tony Low, a researcher at IBM and the University of Minnesota, says,
ur work paves the way for using 2-D material heterostructures for engineering new optical properties on demand.
because the material naturally works at near-infrared wavelengths, this could enable new avenues for infrared spectroscopy,
Fang says, of biomolecules placed on the hybrid material surface. Sheng Shen, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie mellon University who was involved not in this research,
says, his work represents significant progress on understanding tunable interactions of light in graphene-hbn.
The work is retty criticalfor providing the understanding needed to develop optoelectronic or photonic devices based on graphene and hbn,
he says, and ould provide direct theoretical guidance on designing such types of devices. I am excited personally very about this novel theoretical work. a
#Toward'green'paper-thin, flexible electronics (Nanowerk News) The rapid evolution of gadgets has brought us an impressive array of smart products from phones to tablets,
and now watches and glasses. But they still havent broken free from their rigid form.
A Transparent and Photoluminescent Foldable Nanocellulose/Quantum dot Paper")a new step toward bendable electronics. They have developed the first light-emitting, transparent and flexible paper out of environmentally friendly materials via a simple, suction-filtration method.
roll up electronics. American Chemical Society) Technology experts have predicted long the coming age of flexible electronics,
and researchers have been working on multiple fronts to reach that goal. But many of the advances rely on petroleum-based plastics and toxic materials.
Yu-Zhong Wang, Fei Song and colleagues wanted to seek a greener way forward. The researchers developed a thin,
clear nanocellulose paper made out of wood flour and infused it with biocompatible quantum dots tiny, semiconducting crystals made out of zinc and selenium.
The paper glowed at room temperature and could be rolled and unrolled without cracking n
#Nanosensors make robots more human (Nanowerk News) Most people are naturally adept at reading facial expressions from smiling
and frowning to brow-furrowing and eye-rolling to tell what others are feeling. From joy to sadness, facial expressions could soon be decipherable to robots.
Now scientists have developed ultra-sensitive, wearable sensors that can do the same thing. Their technology, reported in the journal ACS Nano("Stretchable, Transparent, Ultrasensitive,
and Patchable Strain Sensor for Humanmachine Interfaces Comprising a Nanohybrid of Carbon nanotubes and Conductive Elastomers"),could help robot developers make their machines more human.
Nae-Eung Lee and colleagues note that one way to make interactions between people and robots more intuitive would be to endow machines with the ability to read their users'emotions
and respond with a computer version of empathy. Most current efforts toward this goal analyze a person's feelings using visual sensors that can tell a smile from a frown, for example.
But these systems are expensive, highly complex and don't pick up on subtle eye movements, which are important in human expression.
Lee's team wanted to make simple, low-cost sensors to detect facial movements, including slight changes in gaze.
The researchers created a stretchable and transparent sensor by layering a carbon nanotube film on two different kinds of electrically conductive elastomers.
They found it could tell whether subjects were laughing or crying and where they were looking.
In addition to applications in robotics the sensors could be used to monitor heartbeats, breathing, dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) and other health-related cues s
#Researchers form complete nanobatteries inside nanopores Nanostructured batteries, when properly designed and built, offer promise for delivering their energy at much higher power and longer life than conventional technology.
To retain high energy density, nanostructures (such as nanowires) must be paced into dense"nanostructure forests, "producing 3-D nanogeometries in
which ions and electrons must rapidly move. Researchers have built arrays of nanobatteries inside billions of ordered,
identical nanopores in an alumina template to determine how well ions and electrons can do their job in such ultrasmall environments.
Up to a billion of these nanopore batteries could fit in a grain of sand. The nanobatteries were fabricated by atomic layer deposition to make oxide nanotubes (for ion storage) inside metal nanotubes for electron transport, all inside each end of the nanopores.
The tiny nanobatteries work extremely well: they can transfer half their energy in just a 30 second charge
or discharge time, and they lose only a few%of their energy storage capacity after 1000 cycles.
Researchers attribute this performance to rational design and well-controlled fabrication of nanotubular electrodes to accommodate ion motion in
and out and close contact between the thin nested tubes to ensure fast transport for both ions and electrons.
Complete nanobatteries are formed in each nanopore of a dense nanopore array (2 billion per cm2),
using atomic layer deposition to carefully control thickness and length of multilayer concentric nanotubes as electrodes at each end.
Research Insights Tiny batteries formed inside nanopores were used to demonstrate that properly scaled nanostructures can utilize the full theoretical capacity of the charge storage material
while their ion insertion processes occur very fast, much like what happens at the surface of a double-layer capacitor.
Science Impact These nanobatteries delivered their stored energy efficiently at high power (fast charge and discharge) and for extended cycling, demonstrating that precise nanostructures can be constructed to assess the fundamentals of ion
and electron transport in nanostructures for energy storage and to test the limits of 3-D nanobattery technology y
#New class of swelling magnets have the potential to energize the world (Nanowerk News) A new class of magnets that expand their volume
when placed in a magnetic field and generate negligible amounts of wasteful heat during energy harvesting, has been discovered by researchers at Temple University and the University of Maryland.
The researchers, Harsh Deep Chopra, professor and chair of mechanical engineering at Temple, and Manfred Wuttig, professor of materials science and engineering at Maryland, published their findings in Nature("Non-Joulian Magnetostriction").
"This image shows a never before seen highly periodic magnetic'cells'or'domains'in iron-gallium alloys responsible for non-Joulian magnetism.
This transformative breakthrough has the potential to not only displace existing technologies but create altogether new applications due to the unusual combination of magnetic properties."
"Our findings fundamentally change the way we think about a certain type of magnetism that has been in place
since 1841,"said Chopra, who also runs the Materials Genomics and Quantum Devices Laboratories at Temple's College of Engineering.
In the 1840s, physicist James Prescott Joule discovered that iron-based magnetic materials changed their shape but not their volume when placed in a magnetic field.
This phenomenon is referred to as"Joule Magnetostriction, "and since its discovery 175 years ago, all magnets have been characterized on this basis."We have discovered a new class of magnets,
which we call'Non-Joulian Magnets, 'that show a large volume change in magnetic fields,"said Chopra."
"Moreover, these non-Joulian magnets also possess the remarkable ability to harvest or convert energy with minimal heat loss.""
""The response of these magnets differs fundamentally from that likely envisioned by Joule, "said Wuttig."
"He must have thought that magnets respond in a uniform fashion.""Chopra and Wuttig discovered that
when they thermally treated certain iron-based alloys by heating them in a furnace at approximately 760 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes,
The researchers found the thermally treated materials contained never before seen microscopic cellular-like structures whose response to a magnetic field is at the heart of non-Joulian magnetostriction."
since they are limited by Joule magnetostriction. Actuation, even in two directions, requires bulky stacks of magnets,
they can be used to create a new generation of sensors and actuators with vanishingly small heat signatures,
These magnets could also find applications in efficient energy harvesting devices; compact micro-actuators for aerospace, automobile, biomedical, space and robotics applications;
and ultra-low thermal signature actuators for sonars and defense applications. Since these new magnets are composed of alloys that are free of rare-earth elements,
they could replace existing rare-earth based magnetostriction alloys, which are expensive and feature inferior mechanical properties,
said researchers.""Chopra and Wuttig's work is a good example of how basic research advances can be true game changers,
"said Tomasz Durakiewicz, National Science Foundation condensed matter physics program director.""Their probing of generally accepted tenets about magnetism has led to a new understanding of an old paradigm.
This research has the potential to catapult sustainable energy-efficient materials in a very wide range of applications
up to 1000 times more than current conventional methods. his advance will open up a range of possibilities for accurately studying complex matter, for example biomolecules in solution,
used high performance computing to introduce a new technique, where the time required for the calculations increases linearly with the number of atoms,
#Freshly squeezed vaccines (Nanowerk News) MIT researchers have shown that they can use a microfluidic cell-squeezing device to introduce specific antigens inside the immune systems B cells,
and implementing antigen-presenting cell vaccines. Such vaccines, created by reprogramming a patients own immune cells to fight invaders,
hold great promise for treating cancer and other diseases. However, several inefficiencies have limited their translation to the clinic,
and only one therapy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. While most of these vaccines are created with dendritic cells,
a class of antigen-presenting cells with broad functionality in the immune system, the researchers demonstrate in a study published in Scientific Reports("Ex Vivo Cytosolic Delivery of Functional Macromolecules to Immune Cells")that B cells can be engineered to serve as an alternative.
As cells pass through the Cellsqueeze device at high speed, narrowing microfluidic channels apply a squeeze that opens small, temporary holes in the cells'membranes.
As a result, large molecules antigens, in the case of this study can enter before the membrane reseals.
Courtesy of SQZ Biotech) We wanted to remove an important barrier in using B cells as an antigen-presenting cell population,
helping them complement or replace dendritic cells, says Gregory Szeto, a postdoc at MITS Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the papers lead author.
Darrell Irvine, a member of the Koch Institute and a professor of biological engineering and of materials sciences and engineering, is the papers senior author.
A new vaccine-preparation approach Dendritic cells are the most naturally versatile antigen-presenting cells.
In the body, they continuously sample antigens from potential invaders which they process and present on their cell surface.
The cells then migrate to the spleen or the lymph nodes, where they prime T cells to mount an attack against cells that are infected cancerous
or, targeting the specific antigens that are ingested and presented. Despite their critical role in the immune system, dendritic cells have used drawbacks
when for cell-based vaccines: They have a short lifespan, they do not divide when activated,
and they are relatively sparse in the bloodstream. B cells are also antigen-presenting cells, but in contrast to dendritic cells, they can proliferate
when activated and are abundant in the bloodstream. However, their functionality is limited more: Whereas dendritic cells constantly sample antigens they encounter,
A b cell is programmed genetically only to bind to a specific antigen that matches the receptor on its surface.
As such, A b cell generally will not ingest and display an antigen if it does not match its receptor.
Using a microfluidic device, MIT researchers were able to overcome this genetically programmed barrier to antigen uptake by squeezing the B cells.
Cellsqueezes microfluidic channels are etched on silicon chips and sealed with a glass layer. The channels temporarily deform cells
so molecules can enter. Courtesy of SQZ Biotech) Through Cellsqueeze, the device platform originally developed at MIT,
the researchers pass a suspension of B cells and target antigen through tiny, parallel channels etched on a chip.
A positive-pressure system moves the suspension through these channels, which gradually narrow, applying a gentle pressure to the B cells.
This squeeze opens small, temporary holes in their membranes, allowing the target antigen to enter by diffusion.
This process effectively loads the cells with antigens to prime a response of CD8 or killer T cells,
which can then kill cancer cells or other target cells. The researchers studied the squeezed B cells in culture
and found that they could expand antigen-specific T cells at least as well as existing methods using antibody-coated beads.
and antigen-specific T cells into mice, observing that the squeezed B cells could expand T cells in the spleen and in lymph nodes.
The researchers also say that this is the first method that decouples antigen delivery from B-cell activation.
when ingesting its antigen or when encountering a foreign stimulus that forces it to ingest nearby antigen.
This activation causes B cells to carry out very specific functions, which has limited options for B-cell-based vaccine programming.
Using Cellsqueeze circumvents this problem and by being able to separately configure delivery and activation,
researchers have greater control over vaccine design. Gail Bishop, a professor of microbiology at the University of Iowa Carver School of medicine and director of the schools Center for Immunology and Immune-Based Diseases, says that this paper presents a creative new approach with considerable
potential in the development of antigen-presenting cell vaccines. The antigen-presenting capabilities of B cells have often been underestimated,
but they are being appreciated increasingly for their practical advantages in therapies, says Bishop, who was involved not in this research.
This new technical approach permits loading B cells effectively with virtually any antigen and has the additional benefit of targeting the antigens to the CD8 T-cell presentation pathway
thus facilitating the activation of the killer T cells desired in many clinical applications. Main squeeze Armon Sharei, now a visiting scientist at the Koch Institute, developed Cellsqueeze while he was a graduate student in the laboratories of Klavs Jensen, the Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering,
and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor and a member of the Koch Institute.
Sharei, Jensen, and Langer are also authors of this paper. In a separate study published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, Sharei and his colleagues first demonstrated that Cellsqueeze can deliver functional macromolecules into immune cells.
The platform has benefits over existing delivery methods including electroporation and genetically engineered viruses, which are limited to delivering nucleic acids.
While nucleic acids can code a cell for a target antigen, these indirect methods have drawbacks:
They have limited ability in coding for difficult-to-identify antigens, and using nucleic acids bears a risk for accidental genome editing.
These methods are also toxic, and can cause cell damage and death. By delivering proteins directly into cells with minimal toxicity,
Cellsqueeze avoids these shortcomings and, in this new study, demonstrates promise as a versatile platform for creating more effective cell-based vaccines.
Our dream is to spawn out a whole class of therapies which involve taking out your own cells, telling them what to do,
and putting them back into your body to fight your disease, whatever that may be, Sharei says.
After developing Cellsqueeze at MIT, Sharei co-founded SQZ Biotech in 2013 to further develop and commercialize the platform.
Just as the company has grown since then now up to 13 employees the device has evolved also. Sharei, now the companys CEO, says that by improving the design
and increasing the number of channels, the current generation has a throughput of 1 million cells per second.
Future steps The researchers say they now plan to refine their B-cell-based vaccine to optimize distribution and function of the immune cells in the body.
A b-cell-based approach could also reduce the amount of patient blood required to prepare a vaccine.
At present patients receiving cell-based vaccines must have drawn blood over several hours each time a new dose must be prepared.
Meanwhile, SQZ Biotech aims to reduce the footprint of its device, which could potentially lower the time
and cost required to engineer cell-based vaccines. We envision a future system, if we can take advantage of its microfluidic nature,
as a bedside or field-deployable device, Sharei says. Instead of shipping your cells off to this big, centralized facility,
you could do it in your hospital or your doctors office. As the biology and technology become further refined
the authors say that their approach could potentially be a more efficient, more effective, and less expensive method for developing cell-based therapies for patients.
Down the road, you could potentially get enough cells from just a normal syringe-based blood draw,
run it through a bedside device that has the antigen you want to vaccinate against, and then youd have the vaccine,
Szeto says s
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