| To: Lateott who wrote (30) | 7/21/2005 1:54:24 PM | | From: donpat | | | | I try!
I like this NNVC more than most (other stocks) around here. I think it has some terrific possibilities. And lining our pockets will be an added bonus; I think the contributions this technology could well contribute to mankind is the main benefit.
Money is one thing - but some things are more important. |
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| To: donpat who wrote (31) | 7/21/2005 4:40:41 PM | | From: jmhollen | | | | O/T & FYI: If some short term "..recouping.." is desirable, I'd suggest a healthy ACHI collection - ASAP.
See Board.
John :-)
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| From: donpat | 7/21/2005 7:08:29 PM | | | | | | Using Nanoparticles, In Vivo Gene Therapy Activates Brain Stem Cells
[This nano+bio is exciting stuff!]
Technique may allow scientists to repair brain cells damaged by disease, trauma or stroke
Release date: Monday, July 25, 2005
Embargoed until: Monday, July 25, 2005, 5:00 PM
Contact: Ellen Goldbaum, goldbaum@buffalo.edu
Phone: 716-645-5000 ext 1415
Fax: 716-645-3765
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Using customized nanoparticles that they developed, University at Buffalo scientists have for the first time delivered genes into the brains of living mice with an efficiency that is similar to, or better than, viral vectors and with no observable toxic effect, according to a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The paper describes how the UB scientists used gene-nanoparticle complexes to activate adult brain stem/progenitor cells in vivo, demonstrating that it may be possible to "turn on" these otherwise idle cells as effective replacements for those destroyed by neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's.
In addition to delivering therapeutic genes to repair malfunctioning brain cells, the nanoparticles also provide promising models for studying the genetic mechanisms of brain disease.
"Until now, no non-viral technique has proven to be as effective as the viral vectors in vivo," said co-author Paras N. Prasad, Ph.D., executive director of the UB Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, SUNY Distinguished Professor in UB's Department of Chemistry and principal investigator of the institute's nanomedicine program. "This transition, from in vitro to in vivo, represents a dramatic leap forward in developing experimental, non-viral techniques to study brain biology and new therapies to address some of the most debilitating human diseases."
Viral vectors for gene therapy always carry with them the potential to revert back to wild-type, and some human trials have even resulted in fatalities.
As a result, new research focuses increasingly on non-viral vectors, which don't carry this risk.
Viral vectors can be produced only by specialists under rigidly controlled laboratory conditions. By contrast, the nanoparticles developed by the UB team can be synthesized easily in a matter of days by an experienced chemist.
The UB researchers make their nanoparticles from hybrid, organically modified silica (ORMOSIL), the structure and composition of which allow for the development of an extensive library of tailored nanoparticles to target gene therapies for different tissues and cell types.
A key advantage of the UB team's nanoparticle is its surface functionality, which allows it to be targeted to specific cells, explained Dhruba J. Bharali, Ph.D., a co-author on the paper and post-doctoral associate in the UB Department of Chemistry and UB's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics.
While they are easier and faster to produce, non-viral vectors typically suffer from very low expression and efficacy rates, especially in vivo.
"This is the first time that a non-viral vector has demonstrated efficacy in vivo at levels comparable to a viral vector," Bharali said.
In the UB experiments, targeted dopamine neurons -- which degenerate in Parkinson's disease, for example -- took up and expressed a fluorescent marker gene, demonstrating the ability of nanoparticle technology to deliver effectively genes to specific types of cells in the brain.
Using a new optical fiber in vivo imaging technique (CellviZio developed by Mauna Kea Technologies of Paris), the UB researchers were able to observe the brain cells expressing genes without having to sacrifice the animal.
Then the UB researchers decided to go one step further, to see if they could not only observe, but also manipulate the behavior of brain cells.
Their finding that the nanoparticles successfully altered the development path of neural stem cells is especially intriguing because of scientific concerns that embryonic stem cells may not be able to function correctly since they have bypassed some of the developmental stages cells normally go through.
"What we did here instead was to reactivate adult stem cells located on the floor of brain ventricles, germinal cells that normally produce progeny that then die if they are not used," said Michal K. Stachowiak, Ph.D., co-author on the paper and associate professor of pathology and anatomical sciences in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Stachowiak is in charge of in vivo studies at the UB Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics.
"It's likely that these stem/progenitor cells will grow into healthy neurons," he said.
"In the future, this technology may make it possible to repair neurological damage caused by disease, trauma or stroke," said Earl J. Bergey, Ph.D., co-author and deputy director of biophotonics at the institute.
The group's next step is to conduct similar studies in larger animals.
The UB research was supported by the John R. Oishei Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Parkinson Disease Association and UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences.
buffalo.edu |
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| From: donpat | 7/26/2005 9:37:22 AM | | | | | | Nanomedicine - How Nanotechnology Can Be Used in the Healthcare/Drug Markets for Humans and Animals
Topics Covered
Background
Firms Who Are Using Nanoparticles in Veterinary Applications
Drug Discovery - Using Biochips and Microfluidic Devices in Genetically Targeted Drugs
Disease Detection - How Nanoparticles Can Be Used in Medical Diagnostics
Using Nanoshells and Quantum Dots to Detect Disease
Heating up Nanoshells with Lasers to Destroy Diseased Tissue
New Drug Delivery Mechanisms - the Benefits of Using Nano-Sized Structures
Using Nanoparticles as Drug Carriers to Smuggle Compounds to Specific Targets
‘Smart Drugs’ - How Nanocapsules Reach Their Targets
Other Types of Nanomaterials Used in Drug Delivery Systems
BioSilicon
Fullerenes
Dendrimers
DNA Nanocapsules
Background
The field of nanomedicine offers ever more breathless promises of new diagnoses and cures as well as ways of improving human performance. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) expects nanotechnology to account for around half of all pharmaceutical industry sales by 2010. What is less hyped is that the same impact is likely to hit the animal health market - either as nanotechnologies show their worth in human medicine or as a proving ground for more controversial approaches to nanomedicine, such as using DNA nanocapsules.
Firms Who Are Using Nanoparticles in Veterinary Applications
Companies such as SkyePharma, IDEXX and Probiomed are currently developing nanoparticle veterinary applications. A full assessment of how pharmaceutical companies are using nanotechnology in drug development and delivery is beyond the scope of this article. Briefly summarised below are some of the key technologies that are also relevant to animal pharmaceuticals.
Drug Discovery - Using Biochips and Microfluidic Devices in Genetically Targeted Drugs
The ability to image and isolate biological molecules on the nano-scale opens the door for more precise drug design as well as much faster genomic screening and screening of compounds to assess their suitability as drugs. Pharma companies are particularly interested in using biochips and microfluidic devices to screen tissues for genetic differences so that they can design genetically targeted drugs (pharmacogenomics).
Disease Detection - How Nanoparticles Can Be Used in Medical Diagnostics
Nanoparticles, which are able to move easily around the body, can be used for diagnosis. Of particular interest are quantum dots - cadmium selenide nanocrystals which fluoresce in different colours depending on their size. Quantum dots can be functionalised to tag different biological components, like proteins or DNA strands, with specific colours. In this way, a blood sample can be quickly screened for certain proteins that may indicate a higher propensity for disease.
Using Nanoshells and Quantum Dots to Detect Disease
A similar effect can be achieved with gold nanoshells, tiny beads of glass covered with a layer of gold that change colours depending on the thickness of the gold. Both nanoshells and quantum dots can be designed to bind to tumours and malignant cells when introduced into the body, allowing them to be more precisely identified.
Heating up Nanoshells with Lasers to Destroy Diseased Tissue
Scientists at Rice University who have pioneered this technique have also shown, in animals, that the nanoshells can be heated up by lasers so that they selectively destroy the diseased tissue they lock onto, without harming skin or nearby healthy tissue. This technology has been commercially licensed to a startup called Nanospectra.
New Drug Delivery Mechanisms - the Benefits of Using Nano-Sized Structures
Drugs themselves are set to shrink. Nano-sized structures have the advantage of being able to sneak past the immune system and across barriers (e.g., the blood-brain barrier or the stomach wall) the body uses to keep out unwanted substances. Pharmaceutical compounds reformulated as nanoparticles not only reach parts of the body that today’s formulations cannot, their large surface area can also make them more biologically active. Increased bioavailability means that lower concentrations of expensive drug compounds would be required, with potentially fewer side effects.
Using Nanoparticles as Drug Carriers to Smuggle Compounds to Specific Targets
Nanoparticles can also be used as carriers to smuggle attached compounds through the body. Leading nanopharma companies such as SkyePharma and Powderject (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Chiron) have developed methods of delivering nanoparticle pharmaceuticals across skin or via inhalation. Researchers in Florida are working on nano delivery systems that diffuse drugs across the eye from specially impregnated contact lenses.
‘Smart Drugs’ - How Nanocapsules Reach Their Targets
As with pesticide delivery, the big interest is in ‘controlled release.’ Many of the big pharma and animal pharma companies working on nano-drugs are using encapsulation technologies such as nanocapsules to smuggle active compounds into and around the body. The capsules can be functionalised to bind at specific places in the body, or be activated by an external trigger, such as a magnetic pulse or ultrasound. The USDA compares these functionalised drug nanocapsules, called “Smart Delivery Systems,” to the postal system, where molecular-coded “address labels” ensure that the packaged pharmaceutical reaches its intended destination.
Other Types of Nanomaterials Used in Drug Delivery Systems
Besides capsules, other nanomaterials being used to deliver drugs are listed below.
BioSilicon
BioSilicon is a highly porous silicon-based nanomaterial product, which can release a medicine slowly over a period of time. Developed by Australian company pSivida, the company uses its BioSilicon technology to fashion tiny capsules (to be swallowed) and also tiny needles that can be built into a patch to invisibly pierce the skin and deliver drugs.
Fullerenes
Fullerenes, the so called “miracle molecules” of nanotechnology (buckyballs and carbon nanotubes are included in this class of carbon molecules), are hollow cages of sixty carbon atoms less than a couple of nanometers wide. Because they are hollow, pharma companies are exploring filling the fullerenes with drug compounds and then functionalising them to bind in different parts of the body.
Dendrimers
Dendrimers are branching molecules that have a tree-like structure and are becoming one of the most popular tools in nanotechnology. Because of their shape and nano-size, dendrimers have three advantages in drug delivery:
· First, they can hold a drug’s molecules in their structure and serve as a delivery vehicle;
· Second, they can enter cells easily and release drugs on target;
· Third, and most importantly, dendrimers don’t trigger immune system responses.
Dendrimers can also be used for chemical analysis and diagnosis – raising the future possibility of synthetic molecules that can locate, diagnose and then treat tumours or other sick cells.
DNA Nanocapsules
DNA nanocapsules smuggle strands of viral DNA into cells. Once the capsule breaks down, the DNA hijacks the cells’ machinery to produce compounds that would be expected in a virus attack, thus alerting and training the immune system to recognise them. DNA nanocapsule technology could also be used to hijack living cells to produce other compounds such as new proteins or toxins. As a result, they must be carefully monitored as a potential biowarfare technology.
Source: ‘Down on the Farm: the Impact of Nano-Scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture’, ETC Group Report, November 2004.
For more information on this source please visit the ETC Group.
azonano.com |
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| From: donpat | 7/26/2005 11:29:26 AM | | | | | | NanoViricides, Inc. Announces Leo Ehrlich as CFO
Tuesday July 26, 11:00 am ET
MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 26, 2005--NanoViricides, Inc. (Pink Sheets:NNVC - News), announced that Leo Ehrlich agreed to move from acting to permanent Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Mr. Ehrlich brings over 20 years of private and public company experience to the Company, including extensive experience in SEC reporting and guidelines.
Mr. Ehrlich became a certified public accountant in 1983 in NYC, and has been an investor in Theracour, the company from which NanoViricides licenses its core technology, since its inception. "My respect for Dr. Diwan has grown over the years we've been working together," noted Mr. Ehrlich. "His ability to talk science with industry leaders is unlike anything I've ever seen. He understands both the science and the business and I believe he will meet milestones set before him. I look forward to building this company with him."
About NanoViricides, Inc.
NanoViricides, Inc. is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for viral therapy. NanoViricides, Inc. has exclusive license in perpetuity for technologies developed by Theracour Pharma for the five virus types HIV, HCV, Herpes, Asian (bird) flu and Influenza. A NanoViricide(TM) is a flexible nanomaterial that is capable of encapsulating active pharmaceutical ingredients, and can be programmed to target a specific type of virus. When a NanoViricide(TM) polymeric micelle enters the patient's blood stream; it attacks and immobilizes circulating virus particles. Once this is done, the active pharmaceutical ingredient gets injected into the virus particle, destroying it completely. The company plans to develop novel NanoViricide(TM) drugs first against HIV, and anticipates that it will license the products to major pharmaceutical companies.
Contact:
NanoViricides, Inc., New York
Leo Ehrlich, 917-853-6440
Source: Nanoviricides, Inc.
biz.yahoo.com |
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| From: donpat | 7/27/2005 1:52:08 PM | | | | | | Nanotech Moves Closer to Cure
When Dr. James Baker returned from the first Gulf War in 1991, his University of Michigan colleagues must have assumed the medical researcher's head had sustained a direct Scud missile hit. The good doctor came home with some pretty wacky ideas.
Instead of using live viruses to destroy diseased cells, why not send in man-made, nanoscale molecules with tiny tendrils that scientists could engineer to battle specific types of cancers?
Remember, this was the early '90s. Few had even heard of the internet, much less "nanotechnology," which was then firmly the domain of futurists, and certainly not on the radar of respectable beaker slingers.
"In fact, there was a lot of derision at NIH (National Institutes of Health) that this was not real science," Baker recalls. "But as it became clear that gene therapy was not going anywhere without different approaches, I think the reality of, the necessity of, bioengineering in this process became clear."
Today, the National Cancer Institute is on its way to becoming a Nano Cancer Institute as it prepares to spend $144.3 million over five years on the engineered nanoparticles "approach" that Baker and just a few others had championed more than a decade ago. As for Baker, he's doing rather well in his corner office at the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology with a panoramic view of downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Baker had been involved in the Army's first attempts at DNA delivery of the adeno vaccine to combat acute respiratory illness among the troops. He found that not only was the body's immune system fighting off the viral-based vaccine, but the entire works were coming to "hard stops" at 150 nanometers. Things just did not get into cells very effectively beyond that.
It seemed clear to Baker that engineered nanoparticles would have to become part of the solution if they wanted to really chase after the bad guys in the body. "If we now want to fix the dysfunction of cells that lead to most of the diseases that we're currently fighting, we have to engineer at the same scale as the cells," Baker says.
That's the problem that was swirling around in Baker's head after the Gulf War. He wasn't the only scientist working on it, but he did have one advantage. He's located just 100 miles south of a nanotech pioneer: former Dow chemist Donald Tomalia, who had invented a type of particle called dendrimers. Tomalia realized -- unfortunately about two decades before the rest of the world -- that his man-made, tendriled molecule could be used in targeted drug delivery.
Tomalia saw that Baker was one of the few scientists at the time who also saw the possibilities within these sticky little nanothings. "He was a medical guy who could understand this," Tomalia says. "I think he very quickly began to realize the important implications that dendrimers would have."
All through the mid- and late '90s, Baker and Tomalia quietly experimented with these particles. A synthetic chemist and a medical researcher made for an odd couple at the time.
Lack of cooperation and understanding between the scientific disciplines is one of the toughest challenges facing nanotech researchers. Cooperation may sound simple to those outside the academic world, but cross-disciplinary collaboration is not the way universities have traditionally been organized.
That's the thinking behind the University of Michigan's new Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and the Biological Sciences, which Baker will head. "I think any university that doesn't develop collaborative centers like this is going to be frozen out," he says.
The convergence of the sciences at Michigan has led to dramatic success of late. Baker's lab recently received a $6.3 million Gates Foundation grant to develop hepatitis B vaccines that can be delivered through the nose, rather than by needle. They will be able to survive outside a refrigerator, making them easier to use in developing nations. And a breakthrough announced in late June heralded a new kind of cancer therapy that acts as a kind of "Trojan horse," infiltrating cancer-cell receptors then turning the cancer against itself.
"I think one of the things that's really important is we actually can, for the first time, show that something injected not only gets into the cancer tumor, but actually gets into the cancer cells themselves," Baker says. "This is very important for both diagnosis and therapy."
The next challenge is getting any of this through the FDA, which is at once under pressure to speed up new drug approvals for an aging population, and to slow down the process in light of recent scandals involving bad side effects.
"Celebrex, Vioxx, all of these drugs that popped up here recently with problems, are whole-body administered -- they go everywhere," Tomalia says. "They think they know where they have gone in all minute detail, and they think they know every enzyme and every receptor site, but you never really quite know."
The best-case scenario, Baker says, is nanotech-enabled cancer therapy in your doctors' office within five years. But that's assuming an accelerated approval process, being pushed by nanotech advocates, which is by no means a foregone conclusion. Left to the normal FDA process, it could be a decade or more.
"We've all got relatives or friends who have died from this," he says. "The therapy is almost worse than the disease." If nothing else, perhaps the end of painful chemotherapy is in sight. "If we can make the therapy nontoxic ... then that's much more practical."
wired.com |
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| To: Dr.Leonardo who wrote (37) | 7/28/2005 8:42:10 AM | | From: donpat | | | | Yes, indeed - I was just going to post the same story (different source)!
Here's mine:
MIT Engineers An Anti-Cancer Smart Bomb
Cambridge MA (SPX) Jul 28, 2005
Imagine a cancer drug that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed.
MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle to do just that.
The dual-chamber, double-acting, drug-packing "nanocell" proved effective and safe, with prolonged survival, against two distinct forms of cancers--melanoma and Lewis lung cancer--in mice.
The work will be reported in the July 28 issue of Nature, with an accompanying commentary.
"We brought together three elements: cancer biology, pharmacology and engineering," said Ram Sasisekharan, a professor in MIT's Biological Engineering Division and leader of the research team.
"The fundamental challenges in cancer chemotherapy are its toxicity to healthy cells and drug resistance by cancer cells," Sasisekharan said. "So cancer researchers were excited about anti-angiogenesis," the theory that cutting off the blood supply can starve tumors to death. That strategy can backfire, however, because it also starves tumor cells of oxygen, prompting them to create new blood vessels and instigate metastasis and other self-survival activities.
The next obvious solution would be combining chemotherapy and anti-angiogenesis--dropping the bombs while cutting the supply lines. But combination therapy confronted an inherent engineering problem. "You can't deliver chemotherapy to tumors if you have destroyed the vessels that take it there," Sasisekharan said. Also, the two drugs behave differently and are delivered on different schedules: anti-angiogenics over a prolonged period and chemotherapy in cycles.
"We designed the nanocell keeping these practical problems in mind," he said. Using ready-made drugs and materials, "we created a balloon within a balloon, resembling an actual cell," explains Shiladitya Sengupta, a postdoctoral associate in Sasisekharan's laboratory.
In addition to Sasisekharan and Sengupta, the co-authors are David Eavarone, Ishan Capila and Ganlin Zhao of MIT's Biological Engineering Division; Nicki Watson of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research; and Tanyel Kiziltepe of MIT's Department of Chemistry.
The team loaded the outer membrane of the nanocell with an anti-angiogenic drug and the inner balloon with chemotherapy agents. A "stealth" surface chemistry allows the nanocells to evade the immune system, while their size (200 nanometers) makes them preferentially taken into the tumor. They are small enough to pass through tumor vessels, but too large for the pores of normal vessels.
Once the nanocell is inside the tumor, its outer membrane disintegrates, rapidly deploying the anti-angiogenic drug. The blood vessels feeding the tumor then collapse, trapping the loaded nanoparticle in the tumor, where it slowly releases the chemotherapy.
The team tested this model in mice. The double-loaded nanocell shrank the tumor, stopped angiogenesis and avoided systemic toxicity much better than other treatment and delivery variations.
But it is patient survival and quality of life that really inspire this research, Sasisekharan said. Eighty percent of the nanocell mice survived beyond 65 days, while mice treated with the best current therapy survived 30 days. Untreated animals died at 20.
"It's an elegant technique for attacking the two compartments of a tumor, its vascular system and the cancer cells," said Judah Folkman of Children's Hospital Boston. "This is a very neat approach to drug delivery," said MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer.
The nanocell worked better against melanoma than lung cancer, indicating the need to tweak the design for different cancers. "This model enables us to rationally and systematically evaluate drug combinations and loading mechanisms," says Sasisekharan. "It's not going to stop here. We want to build on this concept."
spacedaily.com
Nano certainly is doing wonderful, amazing, things and will be the saviour of us all, eventually. |
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| To: donpat who wrote (38) | 7/28/2005 7:37:38 PM | | From: jmhollen | | | | Hi guys,
Please note that if heps to post a link on PRs and News here to the Under 0.25 and Radne's Boards, since a lot of SI'rs may not have NNVC "..SubjectMarked.." yet...:
Message 21552338
I already took care of it for you this time......................
Check you mail box for appropriate and handy links.
John :-)
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| From: donpat | 8/2/2005 9:43:39 AM | | | | | | Nanotube-Laser Combo Selectively Targets Cancer Cells, Study Shows
[Another indication of the power in nano bio and its potential for mankind.]
SCIENCE NEWS
August 02, 2005
Carbon nanotubes--tiny straws of pure carbon--have many properties that make them attractive for applications as varied as nanoelectronics and nanofibers. Scientists are recruiting carbon nanotubes in the fight against cancer, too. A report published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that when paired with a modified laser beam, the rods can act as tiny heaters to selectively destroy tumor cells.
When exposed to near-infrared light, carbon nanotubes quickly release excess energy as heat. Nadine Wong Shi Kam and her colleagues at Stanford University exploited this property to attack cancerous cells. "One of the longstanding problems in medicine is how to cure cancer without harming normal body tissue," notes study co-author Hongjie Dai. Cancer cells tend to be coated in folate receptors, whereas normal cells are not. Thus to ensure that the carbon nanotubes were attracted only to diseased cells, the researchers coated them with folate molecules. The team then shined a flashlight-size near-infrared laser on aqueous solutions of both tumor and normal cells. Although harmless to regular cells, the light heated the nanotubes to 70 degrees Celsius within two minutes, killing the cancer cells they had invaded.
The researchers hope to refine the process for future use. "Folate is just an experimental model that we used," Dai says. "In reality there are more interesting ways we can do this. For example, we can attach an antibody to a carbon nanotube to target a particular type of cancer." To that end, Dai is currently investigating the possibility of using the technique on mice with lymphoma because lymphoma cells have well-defined surface receptors that can be targeted. --Sarah Graham
sciam.com |
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