(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Oregon State University researchers have discovered a way to get anti-inflammatory medicine across the blood-brain barrier, opening the door to potential new therapies for a range of conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and cancer cachexia. (The blood-brain barrier is a protective shield separating the brain from the bloodstream; it is made up of tightly packed cells lining the blood vessels in the brain and controls what substances can move from the blood to the brain.) The delivery method involves specially engineered nanoparticles. Tested in a mouse model, the nanoparticles reached their intended destination, the hypothalamus, and delivered a drug that inhibits a key protein associated with inflammation.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy)
Modern electron microscopes can capture incredibly detailed images of materials down to the atomic level, but they require a skilled operator and can only focus on very small areas at a time. Now, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, have created a n automated workflow that overcomes these limitations by allowing large amounts of data to be collected over wide areas without human intervention and then quickly transferred to supercomputers for real-time processing. Much of the work was done at The Molecular Foundry and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, two DOE Office of Science user facilities at Berkeley Lab.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Polymer-coated nanoparticles loaded with therapeutic drugs show significant promise for cancer treatment. Over the past decade, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a variety of these nanoparticles using a technique called layer-by-layer assembly. To help move these nanoparticles closer to human use, the researchers have now come up with a manufacturing technique that allows them to generate larger quantities of the nanoparticles in a fraction of the time. The researchers have filed for a patent on the technology and are now working with MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation in hopes of potentially forming a company to commercialize the technology.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)
Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of California, San Diego, have developed new technology that could lead to the creation of a rapid point-of-care test for HIV infection. The technology uses a nanomechanical platform and tiny cantilevers to detect multiple HIV antigens at high sensitivity in a matter of minutes. Built into a solar-powered device, this technology could be taken to hard-to-reach parts of the world, where early detection remains a challenge to deliver fast interventions to vulnerable populations without waiting for lab results.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy)
When materials are created on a nanometer scale, even the thermal energy present at room temperature can cause structural ripples. How these ripples affect the mechanical properties of these thin materials can limit their use in electronics and other key systems. Now, using a semiconductor manufacturing process, researchers from Binghamton University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Penn State, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have created alumina structures that are 28 nanometers thick on a silicon wafer with thermal-like static ripples, and then tested these ripples with lasers to measure their behavior. The results match with theories proposed about such structural ripples.