Death Ray 'Spasers' Kill Cancer

Encircling tumors with a phalanx of miniature lasers could offer a new way to battle cancer, a team of Australian researchers is proposing.

Technically, the proposed device isnt really a laser at all, but a spaser, with surface plasmons rather than light undergoing amplification.

Plasmons are oscillations in electron density created in the surface of a small metal object when photons strike it. Its possible to design a device so that the plasmons feed back on themselves, amplifying in much the same way photons bouncing around a laser cavity stimulate the emission of other photons, creating laser light.

The spaser is basically the same as a laser, says Chanaka Rupasinghe, a postgraduate student in electrical and computer engineering at Monash University near Melbourne, Australia. He and his professor, Malin Premaratne, presented their idea in a paper at the recent IEEE Photonics Conference, in Los Angeles.

Spasers have been built of gold nanoparticles surrounded by a silica shell and from cadmium sulfide nanowires on a silver substrate. Earlier this year, Rupasinghe and Premaratne proposed a different design, using graphene and carbon nanotubes.

In their setup, a carbon nanotube would absorb the energy from a separate laser source and transfer it to the surface plasmons of a nearby nanoflake of graphene, creating the spaser effect. Pumping the spaser with 1200-nanometer light would cause it to output light at 1700 nm, Rupasinghe says. They argued their spaser would be mechanically strong but flexible, chemically and thermally stable, and compatible with biomedical applications.

Once they had their design, their next idea was to use it to replace some of the nanoparticles already being explored as cancer treatments that are being designed to deliver drugs directly to tumors. The nanotubes and graphene flakes could have antibodies or ligands attached to them that would draw them to the tumor. Once at the tumor, theyd self-assemble into an array of spasers.

You surround cancer cells with very tiny lasers, instead of nanoparticles, Rupasinghe says.

An external laser producing light between 1000 and 1350 nm could penetrate several centimeters of human tissue and act as a power source for the spaser array. The spasers would then deliver a concentrated blast of heat to the cancer cells. At the same time, Rupasinghe says, the nanotubes could be designed to carry drugs to their target, hitting the tumor with a one-two punch.

No one has yet built the graphene-nanotube spasers, let alone started the long process to see whether theyd make a safe and effective cancer treatment. Our team is basically a theoretical and modelling group, Rupasinghe says. But his hope is that this idea may someday provide another weapon in the anti-tumor arsenal.

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Death Ray 'Spasers' Kill Cancer

Nanotechnology to help in electricity production

New Zealand could tap into a global market worth billions of dollars by using nanotechnology to develop electrical generators that are efficient at converting waste heat into electricity.

Most forms of energy generation produce waste heat which scientists have tried, with only partial success, to convert efficiently into electrical energy.

Thermo-electric generators convert heart, or temperature differences, directly into electrical energy using a phenomenon called the Seebeck effect. However, conversion rates are stubbornly low - generally less than 10 percent - despite extensive efforts to lift performance.

Science is now turning to nanotechnology to provide a breakthrough where conventional technology has failed.

A three-year project being led by GNS Science has been awarded $260,000-a-year from the Marsden Fund to use nanotechnology processes to increase energy conversion efficiencies, leading to lower energy waste and reduced greenhouse gas emissions from energy production.

The project will trial a wafer-thin layer of space-age material embedded onto the surface of generator components to greatly enhance thermal and electrical conductivity.

A crucial ingredient in the project is ion-beam technology where atoms are embedded into the surface of materials to form a strongly bonded layer several hundred atoms thick. This creates superior electrical and physical properties.

The scientists will trial various combinations of bismuth, antimony, and zinc compounds to see which forms the most effective thin layer.

There are many potential applications for this new technology, ranging from lawn mowers and outboard motors to large industrial plants and power stations.

As well as researchers from GNS Science, the project includes scientists from Victoria University of Wellington and The University of Auckland and an American research organisation that specialises in industrial applications of nanotechnology.

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Nanotechnology to help in electricity production

Dublin nanotechnology firm secures 750k funding

An early-stage Dublin-based nanotechnology firm has secured 750,000 in seed funding from a consortium including Enterprise Ireland.

Adama Innovations a firm focused on deploying nanotechnology to common manufacturing processes will use the funds to scale-up production of its first product; a nano-scale probe fabricated from diamond, used in atomic force microscopy (AFM), which images, measures, and manipulates matter at the nanoscale.

According to Adamas managing director, Declan Scanlan: Almost anything that is solid can be analysed by an AFM.

This includes cancer cells, viruses, plastic composites, metals, ceramics and biological surfaces. The AFM allows researchers, scientists and engineers to look at the surface of objects at the atomic level, which offers benefits to the medical devices and pharmaceutical industries, and cancer research, among others.

Adama grew out of AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research), a Science Foundation Ireland-funded centre, based at Dublins Trinity College.

It provides a partnership between leading researchers in material science and industry to develop materials and devices for various sectors, particularly the ICT, medical devices, and industrial technology areas.

Adama Innovations has shown great progress since being established in 2013. We are delighted to fund a company at this early stage, with plans to exceed 2m in revenue and create 10 high-tech manufacturing jobs in the next three years, said Brian ONeill, Enterprise Ireland.

Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

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Dublin nanotechnology firm secures 750k funding

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Reality Check for Googles Nanoparticle Health Tests

Google will face big challenges developing a nanotechnology-based test for cancer and other diseases.

This week Google described its ambitious plan to use magnetic nanoparticles circulating through the blood to detect and report back on signs of cancer or an impending heart attack. Some nanotechnology experts, however, have responded by asking whether Googles project is more science fiction than medical reality.

Its very exciting that a company with Googles financial firepower is taking on this big challenge, says Chad Mirkin, who directs the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University. But he says that what Google has described is an intent to do something, not a discovery or a pathway to get there. At this point, he says, the technology is speculative: its basically a good Star Trek episode.

Googles basic idea is nothing newresearchers have been developing magnetic nanoparticle diagnostics and treatments for years (see Nanomedicine). In the announcement, Andrew Conrad, head of the Life Sciences team at the Google X research lab, said essentially the idea is simple.

The concept might be simple, but executing it isnt. Employing nanoparticles in the body is very difficult, and its unlikely that Googles vision will be realized anytime soon.

The main problem facing the search giant will be biology. Google intends to produce a nanoparticle pill that you can swallow. From there the nanoparticles would somehow get into the bloodstream, something Mirkin says requires a big leap of faith. Once in the bloodstream, theyre supposed to circulate, find their way to targets such as cancer cells, and then be collected for measurements. A magnet held near superficial blood vessels on the wrist, for example, could concentrate the nanoparticles in one place. Google did not say how it would measure a signal from the nanoparticles.

Each of these steps is challenging. For one thing, the bodys natural defenses are designed to eliminate foreign objects, Mirkin says, so Google will need to find a way around that.

In addition to challenges in delivering the nanoparticles and reading a signal from them, another key question is whether the system will be safe, says MIT professor Robert Langer. Indeed, says John McDonald, a professor at Georgia Tech, one of the big hurdles we had with magnetic nanoparticles was their toxicity. McDonald says that Although anything is possible, I think there may be more effective ways to detect cancer and other diseases at an early stage than the approach envisioned by Google.

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Reality Check for Googles Nanoparticle Health Tests

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