Biomedical

A team of researchers from The Ohio State University, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom have shown that gene therapy delivered by naturally derived nanocarriers repaired damaged disks in the spine of mice. The nanocarriers were engineered using mouse connective-tissue cells, called fibroblasts, and loaded with genetic material for a protein that is key to tissue development.

Scientists from Penn State and Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan have developed a new method to generate sulfur compounds, called polysulfides, inside cells. The method induces a chemical reaction that converts hydrogen sulfide to polysulfides inside cells by using self-assembled nano-sized core-shell structures. These structures can be taken up by cells and protect what's inside – in this case, a metal complex that can convert hydrogen sulfide to polysulfides.

Scientists at the University of Oklahoma have found that endothelial cells in breast cancer tumors are two times more likely to interact with medicine-carrying nanoparticles than endothelial cells in healthy breast tissue. Endothelial cells line blood vessels and manage the exchange between the bloodstream and surrounding tissues. The research was conducted on endothelial cells isolated from breast cancer tissues and isolated from healthy breast tissues. The next steps for the research will involve examining how the nanoparticles react in the context of the whole tissue. 

Diabetic wounds, often resistant to conventional treatments, pose serious health risks to millions of people worldwide. Immune cells known as macrophages, which are supposed to help, end up causing inflammation instead, making it harder for the wound to heal properly and quickly. Now, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and The Ohio State University have designed a regenerative medicine therapy to speed up diabetic wound repair.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed an electrochemical process that could offer new protection against bacterial infections without contributing to antibiotic resistance. The researchers first developed an electrochemical method to etch the surface of stainless steel, creating nano-sized needle-like structures on the surface that can puncture bacteria's cell membranes. Then, with a second electrochemical process, the researchers deposited copper ions on the steel's surface. Copper interacts with the cell membranes and ultimately compromises them.

A team of electrical engineering researchers from Penn State and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has created an ultrathin optical element that can control the direction of polarized electromagnetic light waves. The optical element, akin to a glass slide, uses a forest of tiny, antenna-like nanorods that together create a metamaterial – a material engineered to have specific properties not typically found in nature.

Engineers from Columbia University, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the University of Montreal in Canada, and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have shown that an oxygen-free chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method can create high-quality graphene samples at scale. Their work directly demonstrates how trace oxygen affects the growth rate of graphene and, for the first time, identifies the link between oxygen and graphene quality.

Engineers from Arizona State University and Rutgers University have developed a multistep method that applies different nanomaterials to wounds at different times to support both early- and late-stage healing. The method outperformed a common wound dressing in a diabetic mouse model, closing wounds faster and producing more robust skin tissue. Also, the researchers' analysis suggests that their approach unexpectedly activated an immune cell population not normally seen in wounds that can resolve inflammation, which could be a new potential avenue to accelerate healing.

Boston Children’s Hospital; the University of Louisville School of Medicine; Dartmouth College; Emory University; the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom; and Moderna, Inc. (Cambridge, MA) have successfully stimulated animals' immune systems to induce rare precursor B cells of a class of HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies. The researchers engineered immunogens – molecules used in vaccines that elicit a specific immune system response – on nanoparticles that mimic the appearance of a specific part of a protein found on the surface of HIV.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed microscopic robots, known as microrobots, that can swim through the lungs to deliver cancer-fighting medication directly to metastatic tumors. To create the microrobots, researchers chemically attached drug-filled nanoparticles to the surface of green algae cells. The nanoparticles are made of tiny biodegradable polymer spheres, which are loaded with the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin and coated with red blood cell membranes.