(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from Northwestern University, Duke University, and Cornell University have developed the first two-dimensional mechanically interlocked material. Looking like the interlocking links in chainmail, the nanoscale material exhibits exceptional flexibility and strength. With further work, this material holds promise for use in high-performance, light-weight body armor and other uses that demand lightweight, flexible, and tough materials. “We made a completely new polymer structure,” said William Dichtel, the study’s corresponding author. “It’s similar to chainmail in that it cannot easily rip because each of the mechanical bonds has a bit of freedom to slide around. If you pull it, it can dissipate the applied force in multiple directions. And if you want to rip it apart, you would have to break it in many, many different places.”

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Adamas Nanotechnologies (Raleigh, NC), the University of Luxembourg in Luxemburg, Umeå University in Sweden, and Aix Marseille University in France have found that boron-doped diamonds exhibit plasmons – waves of electrons that move when light hits them – allowing electric fields to be controlled and enhanced on a nanometer scale. Previously, boron-doped diamonds were known to conduct electricity and become superconductors, but not to have plasmonic properties. Plasmonic materials, which affect light at the nanoscale, have captivated humans for centuries. For example, the vibrant colors in medieval stained-glass windows result from metal nanoparticles embedded in the glass, and when light passes through, these nanoparticles generate plasmons that produce specific colors.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, MI, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered that a mouse protein, called STELLA, disrupts cancer-causing chemical changes to genes associated with human colorectal cancer cells. First, the researchers found the part of the protein, or peptide, that was required to activate tumor suppressor genes in human colorectal cancer cells. Then, they designed a lipid nanoparticle – an ultratiny drug delivery vehicle made of fatty molecules – to deliver the messenger RNA (mRNA) that codes for this peptide to cells. The therapy performed well in mice, activating tumor suppressor genes and impairing tumor growth. Next, the researchers plan to test this therapy on human patients through clinical trials.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania; the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA; Central South University in Changsha, China, have engineered small nano-sized capsules called extracellular vesicles from human cells to target a cell-surface receptor called DR5 (death receptor 5) that many tumor cells have. When activated, DR5 can trigger the death of these tumor cells by a self-destruct process called apoptosis. Researchers have been trying for more than 20 years to develop successful DR5-targeting cancer treatments. The new approach outperformed DR5-targeting antibodies, which have been considered a leading DR5-targeting strategy. The small extracellular vesicles efficiently killed multiple cancer cell types in lab-dish tests and blocked tumor growth in mouse models, enabling longer survival than DR5-targeting antibodies.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Stanford University, Rice University, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have described how a type of quasiparticle, called a polaron, behaves in tellurene, a nanomaterial made up of tiny chains of tellurium atoms. A polaron forms when charge-carrying particles such as electrons interact with vibrations in the atomic or molecular lattice of a material. The researchers had hypothesized that as tellurene transitions from bulk to nanometer thickness, polarons change from large, spread-out electron-vibration interactions to smaller, localized interactions. Computations and experimental measurements backed up this scenario.