(Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the University of Rhode Island and Brown University have shown that carbon nanotubes could be combined with machine learning to detect subtle differences between closely related immune cells. The researchers used an in vitro experiment that involved placing live cells into a culture dish, adding carbon nanotubes, and then using a specialized microscope with an infrared camera to observe the emitted light from each cell. The camera generated millions of data points, each of which reflected cellular activity. Healthy cells emitted one type of light, while potentially unhealthy or changing cells emitted different light patterns.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from Penn State, the University of North Texas, the University of Pennsylvania, Université Paris-Saclay in France, and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have shown that the light emitted from two-dimensional (2D) materials can be modulated by embedding a second 2D material, called a nanodot, inside them. The researchers showed that by controlling the nanodot size, they could change the color and frequency of the emitted light. The control came from adjusting the band gaps of the materials – essentially the energy threshold electrons must cross to make a material emit light.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the Singapore-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Alliance for Research and Technology in Singapore, in collaboration with Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) and MIT, have developed a groundbreaking near-infrared fluorescent nanosensor that can simultaneously detect and differentiate between iron (II) and iron (III) in living plants. This first-of-its-kind nanosensor allows precise localization of iron in plant tissues or subcellular compartments, enabling the measurement of even minute changes in iron levels within plants. The nanosensor features single-walled carbon nanotubes wrapped in a negatively charged fluorescent polymer, forming a structure that interacts differently with iron (II) and iron (III).

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a patented technology that can inhibit and prevent the growth of pancreatic cancer in the liver. The technology’s goal is to reprogram the liver’s immune defense to attack pancreatic cancer. Key to this technology are liver-targeting nanoparticles that deliver two key components: an mRNA vaccine targeting an immune-activating marker commonly found in pancreatic cancer, and a small molecule that boosts the immune response. “This technology could potentially change the course of metastatic pancreatic cancer, as well as preventing spread to the liver in newly diagnosed patients without metastases,” said André Nel, one of the scientists involved in this study.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy)
Researchers from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab); the University of California, Berkeley; and Northwestern University have developed a way to engineer pseudo-bonds in materials. Instead of forming chemical bonds – which is what makes epoxies and other composites tough – the chains of molecules entangle in a way that is fully reversible. The researchers attached polystyrene chains to 100-nanometers-diameter silica particles to create “hairy particles.” These hairy particles self-assembled into a crystal-like structure, and the space available to each polystyrene chain depended on its position in the structure. While some chains became rigid under confinement, others ultimately disentangled and stretched. The result was a strong, tough, thin-film material, held firmly together by pseudo bonds of tangled polystyrene chains. The research was conducted, in part, at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Berkeley Lab.