Nanotechnology Converges with Biotech, Business and Industry Trends Analysis

Nanoscale devices have the potential to radically change cancer therapy for the better and to dramatically increase the number of effective therapeutic agents.  These devices can serve as customizable, targeted drug delivery vehicles capable of ferrying large doses of chemotherapeutic agents or therapeutic genes into malignant cells while sparing healthy cells, greatly reducing or eliminating the often unpalatable side effects that accompany many current cancer therapies.

At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Dr. James Baker is working with molecules known as dendrimers to create new cancer diagnostics and therapies, thanks to grants from the National Institutes of Health and other funds.  This is part of a major effort named the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences.  In 2014, Merck & Co. subsidiary NanoBio Corporation licensed the use of a nanoeumlsion adjuvant technology developed at the Institute.

A dendrimer is a spherical molecule of uniform size (five to 100 nanometers) and well-defined chemical structure.  Dr. Baker’s lab is able to build a nanodevice with four or five attached dendrimers.  To deliver cancer-fighting drugs directly to cancer cells, Dr. Baker loads some dendrimers on the device with folic acid, while loading others with drugs that fight cancer.  Since folic acid is a vitamin, many proteins in the body will bind with it, including proteins on cancer cells.  When a cancer cell binds to and absorbs the folic acid on the nanodevice, it also absorbs the anticancer drug.  For use in diagnostics, Dr. Baker is able to load a dendrimer with molecules that are visible to an MRI.  When the dendrimer, due to its folic acid, binds with a cancer cell, the location of that cancer cell is shown on the MRI.  Each of these nanodevices may be developed to the point that they are able to perform several advanced functions at once, including cancer cell recognition, drug delivery, diagnosis of the cause of a cancer cell, cancer cell location information and reporting of cancer cell death.  Universities that are working on the leading edge of cancer drug delivery and diagnostics using nanotechnology include MIT and Harvard, as well as Rice University and the University of Michigan.

Meanwhile, at the University of Washington, a research group led by Babak A. Parviz has investigated manufacturing methods that resemble that of plants and other natural organisms by “self-assembly.”  If man-made machines could be designed to assemble themselves, it could revolutionize manufacturing, especially on the nanoscale level.  Researchers are studying ways to program the assembly process by sparking chemical synthesis of nanoscale parts such as quantum dots or molecules which then bind to other parts through DNA hybridization or protein interactions.  The group led by Professor Parviz is attempting to produce self-assembled high-performance silicon circuits on plastic.  It is conceivable that integrated circuits, biomedical sensors or displays could be “grown” at rates exponentially faster than current processes.