The NanoBioTech Revolution

Ray Kurzweil: The Biotechnology Revolution

2013-10-24T09:35:00.001-07:00

Source: WOBI

The NanoBioTech Revolution

James' bond: A graphene / nanotube hybrid

2012-12-11T04:44:00.001-08:00

Seven-atom rings (in red) at the transition from graphene to nanotube make a new hybrid material from Rice University a seamless conductor. The hybrid may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications. Credit: Tour Group/Rice University (Phys.org)

A seamless graphene/nanotube hybrid created at Rice University may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications.

Led by Rice chemist James Tour, researchers have successfully grown forests of carbon nanotubes that rise quickly from sheets of graphene to astounding lengths of up to 120 microns, according to a paper published today by Nature Communications. A house on an average plot with the same aspect ratio would rise into space. That translates into a massive amount of surface area, the key factor in making things like energy-storing supercapacitors. The Rice hybrid combines two-dimensional graphene, which is a sheet of carbon one atom thick, and nanotubes into a seamless three-dimensional structure. The bonds between them are covalent, which means adjacent carbon atoms share electrons in a highly stable configuration. The nanotubes aren't merely sitting on the graphene sheet; they become a part of it.

Many people have tried to attach nanotubes to a metal electrode and it's never gone very well because they get a little electronic barrier right at the interface," Tour said. "By growing graphene on metal (in this case copper) and then growing nanotubes from the graphene, the electrical contact between the nanotubes and the metal electrode is ohmic. That means electrons see no difference, because it's all one seamless material. "This gives us, effectively, a very high surface area of more than 2,000 square meters per gram of material. It's a huge number," said Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science and a co-author with former postdoctoral researcher and lead author Yu Zhu, now an assistant professor at the University of Akron. 

Journal reference: Nature Communications

Provided by Rice University

NanoBioCorp

Approval of new drug that can fix faulty genes

2012-11-13T05:48:00.000-08:00

According to George Dvorsky in We come from the future: The idea of treating genetic diseases by replacing a defective gene with a working copy has been around for nearly three decades, but the road to creating an actual therapy that's safe and effective has proven to be a long and difficult one. Now, thanks to the efforts of the Dutch biotech company uniQure, the Western world's first therapy to correct errors in a person's genetic code has finally been approved. While the therapy is extremely expensive and limited to a rare genetic disorder, the approval is set to open the door for similar interventions.

The drug is called Glybera and it's intended for the treatment of a genetic disorder called Lipoprotein Lipase Deficiency (LPLD), a rare, inherited disease that makes it impossible to metabolize fatty acids found in blood, what results in inflammation of the pancreas. The disorder affects about 1 in every one million people.

"This provides higher benefit to patients than the classical protein replacement strategy" he told Reuters. The European Commission gave uniQure its consent to start selling Glybera next summer.

Glybera works by introducing a normal, healthy LPL gene into the patient's body so that it can make functional LPL protein. The LPL gene is packaged in a delivery vector derived from adeno-associated virus (AAV), serotype 1, which has a natural propensity towards muscle cells.

The company is also currently working on regulatory approval for Glybera in Canada and the United States.

In future, it's thought that similar therapies will be able to remedy other genetic disorders, including Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder (the so-called "bubble boy" disease).

It's worth noting that Glybera is not the world's first gene therapy drug. Back in 2003, China's Shenzhen SiBiono GeneTech won approval for a gene therapy drug for head and neck cancer (though not for use in Europe or North America).

Sources: Reuters, uniQure. Here is a link to the article in We come from the future.

NanoBioCorp

Nanobiotechnology - New comers

2010-04-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

Crysalin Ltd - a breakthrough technology for the multi-billion dollar drug discovery industry

Background
Structure based drug discovery (SBDD) – in essence, computer aided design for pharmaceutical drugs - is routinely used in large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, with billions of dollars being deployed to accelerate the identification and optimisation of new drug candidates. Crysalin, spun-out from the University of Oxford in 2007, has developed a technology to address the major bottleneck in SBDD; specifically the provision of rapid and cost effective solutions for determining 3-D molecular structures for all proteins.

A New Technology for Protein Structure Elucidation
Crysalin has developed and patented lattice-based nanomaterials that demonstrate significant advantages in enabling protein structure elucidation. Current methods, specifically crystallisation, face numerous hurdles because the production of suitable crystal structures remains complex, time consuming and uncertain. In addition, whole classes of therapeutically relevant proteins, for example ion channel and G-protein coupled receptors which have been implicated in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are not amenable to crystallisation techniques.

Crysalin's technology enables structural elucidation of proteins by imposing order on target proteins, rendering them amenable to X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy techniques for resolving 3-D molecular structure. The approach relies on the design and production of protein-based building blocks that self assemble into 1-, 2-, or 3 dimensional arrays. The crystals produced according to this design are stabilised by intermolecular forces that are substantially stronger than those that stabilise conventional protein crystals.

The methodology is equally applicable to all protein classes and therefore will provide the biggest impact where current technologies have failed. To date, Crysalin has received seed investment for IP Group plc, Ora (Guernsey) Ltd. and the Oxford University Challenge Seed Fund (UCSF) to exemplify the technology.

NanoBiorCorp

The NanoBioTech Revolution

2010-03-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to The NanoBioTech Revolution, a blog about investments in the nano- and biotechnology industry.

The nano- biotechnology will be the dominant innovative force behind medicine, materials science, computer, industrial and consumer electronics, and more in the near future. It is important to understand the trends of these industries and how they will change the society of tomorrow.

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2010-03-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

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2010-03-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

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