#Nanoparticle research could enhance drug delivery through skin Scientists at the University of Southampton have identified key characteristics that enhance a nanoparticle's ability to penetrate skin in a milestone study which could have major implications for the delivery of drugs.
Nanoparticles are up to 100000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair and drugs delivered using them as a platform can be concentrated more targeted
Although previous studies have shown that nanoparticles interact with the skin conditions in these experiments have not been controlled sufficiently to establish design rules that enhance penetration.
and functionality (controlled through surrounding molecules) of gold nanoparticles to see how these factors affect skin penetration.
By creating nanoparticles with different physicochemical characteristics and testing them on skin we have shown that positively charged nanorod shaped nanoparticles are two to six times more effective at penetrating skin than others says lead author Dr Antonios Kanaras.
When the nanoparticles are coated with cell penetrating peptides the penetration is enhanced further by up to ten times with many particles making their way into the deeper layers of the skin (such as the dermis.
Establishing which characteristics contribute to penetration is also important in discovering ways to prevent potentially toxic nanoparticles in other materials such as cosmetics from entering the skin.
The research which has been published in the journal Small drew on the medical expertise of Dr Neil Smyth and Dr Michael Ardern-Jones as well as contributions from physicist Professor Otto Muskens.
Our interest is focused now on incorporating these findings into the design of new nanotechnological drugs for transdermal therapy says Dr Kanaras.
#Drug-infused nanoparticle is right for sore eyes For the millions of sufferers of dry eye syndrome their only recourse to easing the painful condition is to use drug-laced eye drops three times a day.
Now researchers from the University of Waterloo have developed a topical solution containing nanoparticles that will combat dry eye syndrome with only one application a week.
The eye drops progressively deliver the right amount of drug-infused nanoparticles to the surface of the eyeball over a period of five days before the body absorbs them.
The nanoparticles about 1/1000th the width of a human hair stick harmlessly to the eye's surface and use only five per cent of the drug normally required.
You can't tell the difference between these nanoparticle eye drops and water said Shengyan (Sandy) Liu a Phd candidate at Waterloo's Faculty of engineering who led the team of researchers from the Department of Chemical engineering and the Centre for Contact lens Research.
if we focused on infusing biocompatible nanoparticles with Cyclosporine A the drug in the eye drops
The research team is now focusing on preparing the nanoparticle eye drops for clinical trials with the hope that this nanoparticle therapy could reach the shelves of drugstores within five years.
and Lyndon Jones from Waterloo recently appeared in Nano Research the leading publication on nanotechnology and nanoscience e
#'Endless possibilities'for bionanotechnology Scientists from the University of Leeds have taken a crucial step forward in bionanotechnology,
Importantly, the new technique can use these lipid membranes to'draw'akin to using them like a biological ink with a resolution of 6 nanometres (6 billionths of a meter),
which is an imaging process that has a resolution down to only a fraction of a nanometer
in order to create nanostructures and to'draw'substances onto nano-sized regions. The latter is called'nanolithography 'and was used the technique by Professor Evans and his team in this research.
The ability to controllably'write 'and'position'lipid membrane fragments with such high precision was achieved by Mr George Heath,
#Targeted nanoparticles that combine imaging with two different therapies could attack cancer other conditions Nanosystems that are'theranostic'they combine both therapeutic and diagnostic functions present an exciting new opportunity for delivering drugs
and Engineering and colleagues at the National University of Singapore have created nanoparticles with two distinct anticancer functions
The nanoparticles also include the cell-targeting property essential for treating and imaging in the correct locations.
The natural fluorescence of the polymer assists with diagnosis and monitoring of therapy as it shows where nanoparticles have accumulated.
This is the first nanoplatform that can offer on-demand and imaging-guided photodynamic therapy and chemotherapy with triggered drug release through one light switch explains Liu emphasizing the significance of the system.
of which overexpressed a surface protein that could bind to the targeting peptide on the nanoparticles.
Fluorescence imaging indicated that the nanoparticles were taken up by the target cells and that ROS and doxorubicin were released within these cells all at significantly higher levels than in cells used as controls.
Introducing the multitasking nanoparticle More information: Yuan Y. Liu J. & Liu B. Conjugated-polyelectrolyte-based polyprodrug:
#Nanoparticles break the symmetry of light How can a beam of light tell the difference between left and right?
Gold nanoparticles on Glass fibres When a particle absorbs and emits light, this light is emitted not just into one direction."
His team has succeeded now in breaking this symmetry of emission using gold nanoparticles coupled to ultra-thin glass fibres.
This effect has now been demonstrated using a single gold nanoparticle on a glass fibre. The fibre is 250 times thinner than a human hair;
A group of researchers from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR has taken the health benefits of green tea to the next level by using one of its ingredients to develop a drug delivery system
Using EGCG IBN researchers have engineered successfully nanocarriers that can deliver drugs and kill cancer cells more efficiently.
Their work was published recently in the leading journal Nature Nanotechnology. The numerous health benefits of green tea have inspired us to utilize it in drug delivery systems.
Our green tea nanocarrier not only delivered protein drugs more effectively to the cancer cells, the combination of carrier and drug also dramatically reduced tumor growth compared with the drug alone.
This is an exciting breakthrough in nanomedicine said IBN Executive director Professor Jackie Y. Ying. A key challenge in chemotherapy is ensuring that the drugs are delivered only to the tumor
To solve this problem IBN has designed a therapeutic nanocarrier for drug delivery using novel compounds derived from EGCG.
Micellar nanocomplexes of less than 100 nanometers in dimension are formed from the OEGCG core and PEG-EGCG shell protecting the protein drug from rapid proteolysis
Using the new nanocarrier twice as much drug accumulated in the cancer cells indicating an improved tumor targeting ability.
IBN has filed a patent on their green tea nanocarrier and is developing this technology for clinical applications.
#Arrays of tiny conical tips that eject ionized materials could fabricate nanoscale devices cheaply Luis Fernando Velsquez-Garca's group at MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) develops dense arrays
depositing or etching features onto nanoscale mechanical devices; spinning out nanofibers for use in water filters body armor and smart textiles;
or propulsion systems for fist-sized nanosatellites. In the latest issue of the IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical systems Velsquez-Garca his graduate students Eric Heubel and Philip Ponce de Leon and Frances Hill a postdoc in his group describe a new prototype
array that generates 10 times the ion current per emitter that previous arrays did. Ion current is a measure of the charge carried by moving ions
But in the new work they instead used carbon nanotubes atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders grown on the slopes of the emitters like trees on a mountainside.
and height of the nanotubes the researchers were able to achieve a fluid flow that enabled an operating ion current at very near the theoretical limit.
That's crucial for nanofabrication applications in which the depth of an etch or the height of deposits must be consistent across an entire chip.
To control the nanotubes'growth the researchers first cover the emitter array with an ultrathin catalyst film
The nanotubes grow up under the catalyst particles which sit atop them until the catalyst degrades.
The emitters like most nanoscale silicon devices were produced through photolithography a process in which patterns are transferred optically to layers of materials deposited on silicon wafers;
Velsquez-Garca believes that using arrays of emitters to produce nanodevices could have several advantages over photolithography the technique that produces the arrays themselves.
and don't require a vacuum chamber the arrays could deposit materials that can't withstand the extreme conditions of many micro-and nanomanufacturing processes.
In my opinion the best nanosystems are going to be done by 3-D printing because it would bypass the problems of standard microfabrication Velsquez-Garca says.
Using their nanotube forest they're able to get the devices to operate in pure ion mode
#Creating nanostructures using simple stamps Nanostructures of virtually any possible shape can now be made using a combination of techniques developed by the MESA+Institute for Nanotechnology of the University of Twente.
Research has been done within the Inorganic Materials science group part of the MESA+Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente.
#Researcher develops optically traceable smart 2-D nanosheet that responds to ph Nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionize the medical industry
Finally they need to perform their function at the right moment ideally in response to a stimulus. The Nanoparticles By design Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science
when he experimented with a new type of nanomaterial: the nanosheet. Specifically he designed a strong stable
and optically traceable smart 2-D material that responds to ph or the acidity or basicity of its surrounding environment.
Nanosheets are unusual amongst nanotechnology because they do not exactly conform to nanoscale. The sheets that Kim produced are just a few nanometers thick thin enough to earn the nano prefix.
But their length and width can be measured in microns sometimes with surface areas that can be measured in centimeters;
much larger than typical nanostructures.##Nanosheets'structure gives them the ability to change shape from a flat surface to a scroll.
Unfortunately most nanosheets roll and unroll spontaneously. If researchers can design a nanosheet to change form in response to a stimulus they can use it for a number of new applications.
Kim tried adding different polymers to his nanosheets to make them responsive. For this experiment he incorporated a relatively simple polymer that responds to ph. He found that the resulting nanosheet would always curl in basic high ph conditions
and always flatten in acidic low ph conditions. Kim also made his nanosheets responsive to near-infrared light a wavelength of light that is harmless to humans.
Depending on the shape of the nanosheet the near-infrared radiation bounces back with a different wavelength.
In this way Kim can noninvasively track the nanosheets even though he can't see them. Using these optical properties to characterize the nanosheets Kim determined that he could approximate ph. Kim envisions biomedical engineers wrapping drugs inside of scrolled nanosheets
so that when the sheet unrolls it releases the medicine. PH responsive nanosheets for example could prove useful for targeting different parts of the human digestive tract
which changes ph between the acidic stomach and basic intestines. Yet this is only the beginning;
creating a responsive nanosheet is just a matter of adding the right polymer. A nanosheet is like pizza dough Kim said.
Whatever you like to put on it#one topping two toppings anything#you can. A nanosheet with a heat-sensitive polymer could burn surrounding tumors to destroy them functioning as a kind of super-specific chemotherapy.
It's easy to get the nanosheets to the cancer cells explains Kim. Targeting specific tissues is simply a matter of adding the appropriate biomarker
so that the body sends the nanosheet where it belongs. The advantage of the rolling means that this nanosheet can entrap many markers
or drugs securely inside the body said Kim. By encapsulating a dangerous substance such as a cancer-treating drug into a nanosheet doctors can attack very specific parts of the body.
This would decrease the amount of the drug necessary and minimize side effects. There are tons of smart polymers
and metals Kim said explaining the many properties he hopes to incorporate into nanotechnology. This new structure is composite
which means it allows us to mix all different kinds of components. Now Kim just needs to build the right nanosheet for each purpose.
Explore further: Like cling wrap new biomaterial can coat tricky burn wounds and block out infection More information:
Smart Composite Nanosheets with Adaptive Optical Properties Jeong-Hwan Kim Murtaza Bohra Vidyadhar Singh Cathal Cassidy and Mukhles Sowwan Applied materials & Interfaces2014.
American Chemical Society DOI: 10.1021/am504170
#New nanomaterial introduced into electrical machines Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland has constructed the world's first prototype electrical motor using carbon nanotube yarn in the motor windings.
The new technology may significantly enhance the performance. Engineers of LUT have constructed the world's first electrical motor applying a textile material;
carbon nanotube yarn. The presently most electrically conductive carbon nanotube yarn replaces usual copper wires in the windings.
The motor prototype is built by the LUT Electrical engineering group as a start towards lightweight efficient electric drives.
The test motor output power is 40 W it rotates at 15000 rpm and has almost a 70%efficiency.
In the near future carbon nanotube fibers have potential to significantly enhance the performance and energy efficiency of electrical machines.
The new technology may revolutionize the whole industry. Researchers are constantly searching for opportunities to upgrade the performance of electrical machines;
to this end one of the objectives is to find higher-conductivity wires for the windings.
The best carbon nanotubes (CNTS) have demonstrated conductivities far beyond those of the best metals. Thus future windings made of CNTS may have a double conductivity compared with the present-day copper windings.
In order to make CNTS easy to manipulate they are spun to form multifiber yarn. If we keep the electrical machine design parameters unchanged and only replace copper with future carbon nanotube wires it is possible to reduce the Joule losses in the windings to half of the present-day machine losses.
Carbon nanotube wires are significantly lighter than copper and also environmentally friendlier. Therefore replacing copper with nanotube wires should significantly reduce the CO2 EMISSIONS related to the manufacturing
and operating of electrical machines. Furthermore the machine dimensions and masses could be reduced. The motors could also be operated in significantly higher temperatures than the present ones says Professor Juha Pyrh nen who has led the design of the prototype at LUT.
No definite upper limit for the conductivity Traditionally the windings in electrical machines are made of copper which has the second best conductivity of metals at room temperature.
Despite the high conductivity of copper a large proportion of the electrical machine losses occur in the copper windings.
The carbon nanotube yarn does not have a definite upper limit for conductivity (e g. values of 100 MS/m have already been measured.
The prototype motor uses carbon nanotube yarns spun and converted into an isolated tape by a Japanese-Dutch company Teijin Aramid
We expect that in the future the conductivity of carbon nanotube yarns could be even three times the practical conductivity of copper in electrical machines.
Carbon nanotube fibers outperform coppe e
#New absorber will lead to better biosensors Biological sensors or biosensors are like technological canaries in the coalmine.
Currently plasmonic absorbers used in biosensors have a resonant bandwidth of 50 nanometers said Koray Aydin assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University's Mccormick School of engineering and Applied science.
Aydin and his team have created a new nanostructure that absorbs a very narrow spectrum of light#having a bandwidth of just 12 nanometers.
By using nanofabrication techniques in the lab Aydin's team found that removing the insulating layer#leaving only metallic nanostructures#caused the structure to absorb a much narrower band of light.
#'Stealth'nanoparticles could improve cancer vaccines Cancer vaccines have emerged recently as a promising approach for killing tumor cells before they spread.
And the key they report in the journal ACS Nano is in the vaccine's unique stealthy nanoparticles.
if stealthy nanoparticles they had developed and clinically tested in patients might hold the answer. The researchers injected the nanoparticles into mice.
They found that the particles which have no electric charge or surface molecules that would attract the attention of circulating immune cells were able to enter the mice's lymph nodes.
When molecules for signaling killer T cells were put inside the nanoparticles they hindered tumor growth far better than existing vaccines.
Nanogel-Based Immunologically Stealth Vaccine Targets Macrophages in the Medulla of Lymph node and Induces Potent Antitumor Immunity ACS Nano 2014 8 (9) pp 9209#9218.
We developed a nanoparticulate cancer vaccine by encapsulating a synthetic long peptide antigen within an immunologically inert nanoparticulate hydrogel (nanogel) of cholesteryl pullulan (CHP.
After subcutaneous injection to mice the nanogel-based vaccine was transported efficiently to the draining lymph node and was engulfed preferentially by medullary macrophages
The nanogel-based vaccine significantly inhibited in vivo tumor growth in the prophylactic and therapeutic settings compared to another vaccine formulation using a conventional delivery system incomplete Freund's adjuvant.
which may underlie the potency of the macrophage-oriented nanogel-based vaccine. These results indicate that targeting medullary macrophages using the immunologically stealth nanoparticulate delivery system is an effective vaccine strategy e
#Nanoparticles accumulate quickly in wetland sediment (Phys. org) A Duke university team has found that nanoparticles called single-walled carbon nanotubes accumulate quickly in the bottom sediments of an experimental wetland setting an action they say could indirectly damage the aquatic food chain.
The results indicate little risk to humans ingesting the particles through drinking water say scientists at Duke's Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT.
But the researchers warn that based on their previous research the tendency for the nanotubes to accumulate in sediment could indirectly damage the aquatic food chain in the long term
if the nanoparticles provide Trojan horse piggyback rides to other harmful molecules. The results appear online in the journal Environmental science:
Carbon nanotubes are rapidly becoming more common because of their usefulness in nanoelectric devices composite materials and biomedicine.
Ferguson and his colleagues dosed the mesocosms with single-walled carbon nanotubes and measured their concentrations in the water soil and living organisms during the course of a year.
They found that the vast majority of the nanoparticles quickly accumulated in the sediment on the pond floor.
However they found no sign of nanoparticle buildup in any plants insects or fish living in the mesocosms.
and the animals that eat them Previous research has shown that carbon nanotubes take a long time to degrade through natural processes
These nanoparticles are really good at latching onto other molecules including many known organic contaminants said Ferguson.
The nanoparticle-pollutant package could then be eaten by sediment-dwelling organisms in a sort of'Trojan horse'effect allowing the adsorbed contaminants to accumulate up the food chain.
whether or not these pollutants can be stripped away from the carbon nanotubes by these animals'digestive systems after being ingested continued Ferguson.
Biodistribution of carbon nanotubes in the body More information: Fate of single walled carbon nanotubes in wetland ecosystems. Schierz A. Espinasse B. Wiesner M. R. Bisesi J. H. Sabo-Attwood T. Ferguson P. L. Environmental science:
Nano Sept. 2014. DOI: 10.1039/c4en00063 3
#All directions are created not equal for nanoscale heat sources Thermal considerations are rapidly becoming one of the most serious design constraints in microelectronics, especially on submicron scale lengths.
A study by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has shown that standard thermal models will lead to the wrong answer in a three-dimensional heat-transfer problem
a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois."Our current understanding of nanoscale thermal transport isn't nuanced enough to quantitatively predict
Wilson and Cahill also studied the effect of interfaces on nanoscale thermal transport.""It's been well known for 75 years that the presence of a boundary adds a thermal boundary resistance to the heat-transfer problem,
"Wilson and Cahill also provided a theoretical description of their results that can be used by device engineers to better manage heat and temperature in nanoscale devices c
Their experiments show that future computer chips could be based on three-dimensional arrangements of nanometer scale magnets instead of transistors.
They report their latest results in the journal Nanotechnology. In a 3d stack of nanomagnets, the researchers have implemented a so-called majority logic gate
which could serve as a programmable switch in a digital circuit. They explain the underlying principle with a simple illustration:
Gates made from field-coupled nanomagnets work in an analogous way, with the reversal of polarity representing a switch between Boolean logic states,
of which sits 60 nanometers below the other two, and is read out by a single output magnet.
So-called domain walls generated there are able to flow through magnetic wires under the control of surrounding nanomagnets.
The most basic building blocks, the individual nanomagnets, are comparable in size to individual transistors. Furthermore, where transistors require contacts and wiring,
nanomagnets operate purely with coupling fields. Also, in building CMOS and nanomagnetic devices that have the same function for example
TUM doctoral candidate Irina Eichwald, lead author of the Nanotechnology paper, explains:""The 3d majority gate demonstrates that magnetic computing can be exploited in all three dimensions,
Briseno with colleagues and graduate students at UMASS Amherst and others at Stanford university and Dresden University of Technology Germany report in the current issue of Nano Letters that by using single-crystalline organic nanopillars
or nanograss they found a way to get around dead ends or discontinuous pathways that pose a serious drawback when using blended systems known as bulk heterojunction donor-acceptor or positive-negative (p-n) junctions for harvesting energy in organic solar cells.
We report here that we have developed at last the ideal architecture composed of organic single-crystal vertical nanopillars.
Nanopillars are engineered nanoscale surfaces with billions of organic posts that resemble blades of grass and like grass blades they are particularly effective at converting light to energy.
and packing at electrode surfaces the team combined knowledge about graphene and organic crystals. Though it was difficult Briseno says they managed to get the necessary compounds to stack like coins.
In this case the anisotropy is along the nanopillar perpendicular to the substrate. Briseno says The biggest challenge in producing this architecture was finding the appropriate substrate that would enable the molecules to stack vertically.
We had exploited essentially every substrate possible until we finally succeeded with graphene he adds which happened by accident
Vertical nanopillars are ideal geometries for getting around these challenges Briseno says because charge separation/collection is most efficient perpendicular to the plastic device.
In this case our nanopillars highly resemble nanograss. Our systems share similar attributes of grass such as high density array system vertical orientations
We envision that our nanopillar solar cells will appeal to low-end energy applications such as gadgets toys sensors and short lifetime disposable devices s
and Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, have been developing sophisticated micro -and nanotechnological toolsanging in size from one millionth to one billionth of a metero develop functional substitutes for damaged heart tissues.
Searching for innovative methods to restore heart function especially cardiac"patches"that could be transplanted into the body to replace damaged heart tissue,
which incorporates biomaterial harvested from patients and gold nanoparticles.""Our goal was said twofold Dr. Dvir.""To engineer tissue that would not trigger an immune response in the patient,
"At his Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative medicine, Dr. Dvir explored the integration of gold nanoparticles into cardiac tissue to optimize electrical signaling between cells."
we deposited gold nanoparticles on the surface of our patient-harvested matrix, 'decorating'the biomaterial with conductors,
"The result was that the nonimmunogenic hybrid patch contracted nicely due to the nanoparticles, transferring electrical signals much faster and more efficiently than non-modified scaffolds."
#Nanotube cathode beats large pricey laser Scientists are a step closer to building an intense electron beam source without a laser.
Using the High-Brightness Electron Source Lab at DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory a team led by scientist Luigi Faillace of Radiabeam Technologies is testing a carbon nanotube cathode about the size of a nickel
Tests with the nanotube cathode have produced beam currents a thousand to a million times greater than the one generated with a large pricey laser system.
While carbon nanotube cathodes have been studied extensively in academia Fermilab is the first facility to test the technology within a full-scale setting.
but at the nanoscale it resembles in Piot's words millions of lightning rods. When a strong electric field is applied it pulls streams of electrons off the surface of the cathode creating the electron beam.
The exceptional strength of carbon nanotubes prevents the cathode from being destroyed. Traditionally accelerator scientists use lasers to strike cathodes
The tested nanotube cathode requires no laser: it only needs the electric field already generated by an accelerator to siphon the electrons off a process dubbed field emission n
#Nanoengineering enhances charge transport promises more efficient future solar cells Solar cells based on semiconducting composite plastics and carbon nanotubes is one of the most promising novel technology for producing inexpensive printed solar cells.
Physicists at Umeå University have discovered that one can reduce the number of carbon nanotubes in the device by more than 100 times
while maintaining exceptional ability to transport charges. This is achieved thanks to clever nanoengineering of the active layer inside the device.
Their results are published as front page news in the journal Nanoscale. Carbon nanotubes are more and more attractive for use in solar cells as a replacement for silicon.
They can be mixed in a semiconducting polymer and deposited from solution by simple and inexpensive methods to form thin and flexible solar cells.
The hybrid material is easy to spread out over a large surface and the nanotubes have outstanding electrical conductivity,
and they can effectively separate and transport electrical charges generated from solar energy. Earlier this year, Dr. David Barbero and his research team at Umeå University,
if carbon nanotubes are connected to each other in a controlled manner to form complex nanosized networks, one can achieve significantly higher charge transport
Previous studies have reported that there is a percolation threshold for the amount of carbon nanotubes necessary to transport efficiently electric charges in a device.
and charge transport at very low nanotube loadings, thereby strongly reducing materials costs o
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