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

Cancers co-opt both the immune and cardiovascular systems to fuel their own growth. They do this in part by forming new blood vessels that provide essential nutrients to rapidly dividing cancer cells. T cells in the immune system also use blood vessels as conduits for finding and invading tumors. But vessels in tumors are often abnormal and put up barricades that impede the ability of T cells to locate and kill cancer cells. Now, by using a nanotechnology invented at Vanderbilt University, researchers have discovered that they could reverse the malformed tumor vasculature by activating the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway, a component of the immune system that plays an important role in protecting against pathogen infection and the development of cancers.

An international team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside; the Institute of Magnetism in Kyiv, Ukraine; and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, has developed a comprehensive manual for engineering spin dynamics in nanomagnets – an important step toward advancing spintronic and quantum-information technologies. Despite their small size, nanomagnets – found in most spintronic applications – reveal rich dynamics of spin excitations, or "magnons," which are the quantum-mechanical units of spin fluctuations. 

Researchers from the University of Oklahoma and Yale University have developed a super-resolution imaging platform technology that improves understanding of how nanoparticles interact within cells. The researchers suggest that their super-resolution imaging platform technology could be used to improve the engineering of safer and more effective nanomedicines. “Using this new super-resolution imaging method, we can now start to track and monitor nanoparticles inside cells, which is a prerequisite for designing nanomedicines that are safer and more efficient in reaching certain areas within cells,” said Stefan Wilhelm, one of the scientists involved in this study.

Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed smart coatings for surgical orthopedic implants that can monitor strain on the devices while killing infection-causing bacteria. Taking inspiration from the antibacterial wings of cicadas and dragonflies, the researchers created a thin foil patterned with nanoscale pillars like those found on the insects’ wings. When a bacterial cell tries to bind to the foil, the pillars puncture the bacterial cell wall, killing the bacteria. 

Researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have developed a new diagnostic technique that will allow for faster and more accurate detection of neurodegenerative diseases. These diseases share a common feature – the buildup of misfolded proteins in the central nervous system. But the diagnostic methods used to detect these misfolded proteins can be expensive and time-consuming. The researchers added 50-nanometer silica nanoparticles to protein-misfolding detection methods, which dramatically reduced detection times from about 14 hours to only four hours and increases the sensitivity by a factor of 10.

A research team led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory has used powerful X-ray beams to unlock a new understanding of materials that are important to the production and use of hydrogen. The goal is to make hydrogen production and usage more efficient and less expensive, offering a better fuel for transportation and industry. The researchers aimed an intense X-ray beam onto a single grain of platinum. A nanodroplet chemical cell, created with a tiny pipette tip, was used to control the chemical reaction that was happening on the platinum grain to produce hydrogen.

Using state-of-the-art magnetic imaging, researchers from Cornell University, the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, the University of North Dakota, and The Ohio State University have, for the first time, characterized a key property of the superconducting state of a class of atomically thin materials that are too difficult to measure due to their minuscule size. The group's superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) revealed that the material was expelling the device's magnetic field. "Seeing magnetic field expulsion, in combination with very low resistance, is a really clear signature that something is a superconductor," said Alexander Jarjour, one of the researchers involved in this study.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (including the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies), the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Ericsson Research in Gothenburg, Sweden, have demonstrated a novel technology that can effectively and efficiently “grow” layers of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide materials directly on top of a fully fabricated silicon chip to enable denser integrations. Growing 2D materials directly onto a silicon wafer usually requires temperatures of about 600 degrees Celsius, while silicon transistors and circuits could break down when heated above 400 degrees. In contrast, the newly developed technology operates at low temperatures and does not damage the chip. 

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the University of Melbourne in Australia have shown that extremely thin layers of black phosphorus can be stimulated to emit useful quantities of light in specific wavelengths. The work is a fundamental discovery about the properties of black phosphorus, and it suggests exciting prospects for applications in night vision, sensing, and spectroscopy.

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard have designed a new nanoparticle sensor that could enable early diagnosis of cancer with a simple urine test. The sensor, which can detect different cancerous proteins, could also be used to distinguish the type of a tumor or how it is responding to treatment. The nanoparticles are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed short sequences of DNA that are excreted in the urine. Analyzing these DNA "barcodes" can reveal distinguishing features of a particular patient's tumor. The researchers designed their test so that it can be performed using a strip of paper, similar to an at-home COVID-19 test.