Biotech Strategy Blog

Commentary on Science, Innovation & New Products

Posts tagged ‘nanoparticle’

How to measure the effect of nanoparticles on the heart

By on August 3, 2011

Thanks to Christian Assad (@Christianassad), Cardiology Fellow at TMHS/UTMB, for tweeting the press release from researchers at the Technical University in Munich (Technische Universitaet Munchen) on how artificial nanoparticles may influence heart rate:

Christian Assad Tweet How to measure the effect of nanoparticles on the heart

Using a Langendorff heart, which is an isolated heart from an animal, flushed with a nutrient solution instead of blood, researchers were able to show that certain nanoparticles caused an increased heart rate, cardiac arrhythmia and modified ECG.

Researchers hypothesized that nanoparticles cause the release of noradrenaline. However, there is no clinical data associated with the press release that can be analyzed, so the implications of this research are limited.

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Nanoparticles using layer-by-layer technology provide targeted cancer drug delivery

By on May 6, 2011

At the recent ARVO meeting, one of the symposia that I live tweeted from was on “Nanotechnology for Drug and Gene Delivery.”  During his presentation on “Nanomedicines: From Bench to Bedside” Vladimir Torchilin from Northeastern described how nanotechnology can use methods from other scientific disciplines including layer-by-layer (LbL) polymer chemistry.

Pieter Droppert @3NT ARVO Tweet Nanoparticles using layer by layer technology provide targeted cancer drug delivery

Which leads me into an interesting paper that came across my desk from Zhiyong Poon and colleagues at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

In their paper published online on April 23, 2011 in ACS Nano. they describe how nanoparticles with a pH-sheddable layer can be used to target tumor hypoxia.

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“Diamonds are Forever” – using nanodiamonds for drug delivery may improve the efficacy of cancer chemotherapy

By on March 18, 2011

Nanotechnology is set to have a major impact on drug development and new products for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.  Research from UCSF and Northwestern University published earlier this year in “Science Translational Medicine” shows this potential.

Edward Chow and colleagues describe how binding the cancer chemotherapy doxorubicin (DOX) to carbon nanoparticles 2-8nm in diameter in the form of a diamond, “nanodiamond” (ND), improved drug efficacy and overcame drug resistance.  Although this pre-clinical animal research has not yet been confirmed in humans, it raises the possibility of more efficient chemotherapies and the hope of increased survival rates as a result.

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Innovation in Nanotechnology will lead to improved drug delivery, diagnostics & imaging

By on March 17, 2011

Innovation in drug delivery presents opportunities for biotechnology companies, and is an area I expect we will see major leaps forward through nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology is the application of science and engineering to materials that are between 1 and 100 nanometers (nm) in size.  The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) defines nanotechnology as “the creation and use of structures, devices, and systems that have novel properties and functions because of their small size.”

1nm is one-billionth of a meter.  To put this in context, 1nm is one seven-thousandth of the width of a red blood cell or one eighty-thousandth of the width of a human hair. These are unimaginably small materials that are engineered to operate at the molecular and atomic level.

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