News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

Researchers from Rice University, Vanderbilt University, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a system for culturing cancer cell clusters that can shed light on hard-to-study tumor properties. The new zinc oxide-based culturing surface mimics the nanoscale roughness of the lotus leaf surface structure, providing a highly tunable platform for the high-throughput generation of three-dimensional nanoscale tumor models. The superhydrophobic array device can be used to create models for studying the progression of cancer, including metastasis – the stage in the disease when cancerous cells travel through the bloodstream from a primary tumor site to other parts of the body.

Researchers at the City University of New York have experimentally demonstrated that metasurfaces (two-dimensional materials structured at the nanoscale) can precisely control the optical properties of thermal radiation generated within the metasurface itself. This work paves the way for creating custom light sources with unprecedented capabilities. Metasurfaces offer a solution for greater utility by controlling electromagnetic waves through meticulously engineered shapes of nanopillars that are arrayed across their surfaces. 

Researchers from Harvard University and the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain have been able to successfully put tadpoles into a hibernation-like torpor state using donepezil, a drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat Alzheimer's. This advance means that donepezil could potentially be repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury while a person is being transported to a hospital. When used on its own, the drug seemed to cause some toxicity in the tadpoles, so the researchers encapsulated donepezil inside lipid nanocarriers, which reduced toxicity and caused the drug to accumulate in the tadpoles’ brain tissue – a promising result, because the central nervous system is known to mediate hibernation and torpor in animals. 

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated a technology that uses DNA to store data. The new technology is made possible by recent techniques that have enabled the creation of soft polymer materials that have unique morphologies. "Specifically, we have created polymer structures that we call dendricolloids – they start at the microscale, but branch off from each other in a hierarchical way to create a network of nanoscale fibers," says Orlin Velev, one of the researchers involved in this study. "The ability to distinguish DNA information from the nanofibers it's stored on allows us to perform many of the same functions you can do with electronic devices," says Kevin Lin, another researcher involved in this study.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota, Auburn University, Purdue University, the City University of New York, Vanderbilt University, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in India, Zhejiang University in China, Kyung Hee University in South Korea, and Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain have provided insight into how light, electrons, and crystal vibrations interact in materials. The researchers studied planar polaritons – hybrid particles created from the interaction between light and matter – in two-dimensional (2D) crystals. The research has implications for developing on-chip architectures for quantum information processing and thermal management.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Riverside, have developed polymeric nanocarriers that can cross plant cell walls, delivering functional proteins directly into the cells with unprecedented efficiency. These nanocarriers are engineered with a high aspect ratio, meaning they are long and thin, which is essential for their ability to cross the plant cell wall. One of the critical findings of the study is that the efficiency of protein delivery highly depends on the size and charge of the nanocarriers: Nanocarriers with a width greater than 14 nanometers or with insufficient positive charge were less effective at penetrating the plant cell wall and delivering their protein cargo. 

Just a few years ago, researchers discovered that changing the angle between two layers of graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, also changed the material's electronic and optical properties. To study the physics underlying this phenomenon, researchers usually produce tens to hundreds of different configurations of the twisted graphene structures – a costly and labor-intensive process. Now, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have created a device that can twist a single structure in countless ways. In other words, the researchers demonstrated the world's first micromachine that can twist two-dimensional (2D) materials at will.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and Indiana University have shown that by combining an electron microscope, a small sample holder with microscopic channels, and computer simulations, it is possible to see how nanoscale building blocks can rearrange into different organized structures. In the study, the researchers suspended nanoparticles in tiny channels of liquid on a microfluidic flow cell. The researchers learned that the instrument gave the nanoparticles – which normally are attracted to each other – just enough electrostatic repulsion to push them apart and allow them to assemble into ordered arrangements.

Engineers at the University of Virginia have created a drug nanocarrier designed to cure chronic or deadly respiratory diseases by slipping past the lungs' natural defenses. The engineers successfully demonstrated the nanocarrier's effectiveness using a device that captures the geometric and biological features of human airways. "We think this innovation not only promises better treatments of lung diseases with reduced side effects, but also opens possibilities for treating conditions affecting mucosal surfaces throughout the body," said Liheng Cai, one of the engineers involved in this study.

This article features Heman Bekele, a high school student who was named “Kid of the Year 2024” by TIME magazine. Bekele is working on a soap that that could one day treat, and even prevent, multiple forms of skin cancer. His idea is to combine the soap with a lipid-based nanoparticle that would linger on the skin when the soap is washed away. The article is accompanied by a short video interview with Bekele.