(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Monitoring pressure inside the skull is key to treating traumatic brain injuries and preventing long-lasting complications, but most of the monitoring devices are large and invasive. Now, researchers from Georgia Tech and Louisiana State University, along with international collaborators, have created a nanosensor made from ultra-thin, flexible silicone that can be embedded in a catheter. Once the catheter is in a patient’s skull, the nanosensor can continuously gather data at a more sensitive rate than traditional devices. With this nanosensor, even the smallest pressure changes could alert clinicians that further treatment is needed.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Scientists at Penn State have developed a new design for thermogels – materials that can be injected as a liquid and turn into a solid inside our bodies – that further improves these materials’ properties. The newly designed thermogels are made with nanoparticles that have sticky spots, similar to arms reaching out and giving the nanoparticles places to connect with one another and form a structure. The method may be especially appealing for soft tissue reconstruction, in which case thermogels could serve as structures that provide a framework for cells to stick to and form new, healthy tissue.

(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.