New computer assisted design (CAD) tools for engineering RNA components have been developed for the growing field of synthetic biology. The knowledge of RNA folding and RNA catalytic and binding functions incorporated into these CAD tools may also prove useful for RNA nanotechnology. A hat tip to Science Daily for reprinting this news release from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) “CAD for RNA“:

The computer assisted design (CAD) tools that made it possible to fabricate integrated circuits with millions of transistors may soon be coming to the biological sciences. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have developed CAD-type models and simulations for RNA molecules that make it possible to engineer biological components or “RNA devices” for controlling genetic expression in microbes. This holds enormous potential for microbial-based sustainable production of advanced biofuels, biodegradable plastics, therapeutic drugs and a host of other goods now derived from petrochemicals.

“Because biological systems exhibit functional complexity at multiple scales, a big question has been whether effective design tools can be created to increase the sizes and complexities of the microbial systems we engineer to meet specific needs,” says Jay Keasling, director of JBEI and a world authority on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. “Our work establishes a foundation for developing CAD platforms to engineer complex RNA-based control systems that can process cellular information and program the expression of very large numbers of genes. Perhaps even more importantly, we have provided a framework for studying RNA functions and demonstrated the potential of using biochemical and biophysical modeling to develop rigorous design-driven engineering strategies for biology.” …

The ressearch was published in Science [abstract]. To test their CAD tools, the researchers engineered 28 molecular devices to regulate metabolic pathways in bacteria via RNA-controlled gene expression, and verified that expected levels of expression were obtained. From the abstract, “… More broadly, we provide a framework for studying RNA functions and illustrate the potential for the use of biochemical and biophysical modeling to develop biological design methods.”

The news release continues:

… As with other engineering disciplines, CAD tools for simulating and designing global functions based upon local component behaviors are essential for constructing complex biological devices and systems. However, until this work, CAD-type models and simulation tools for biology have been very limited.

Identifying the relevant design parameters and defining the domains over which expected component behaviors are exerted have been key steps in the development of CAD tools for other engineering disciplines,” says Carothers, a bioengineer and lead author of the Science paper who is a member of Keasling’s research groups with both JBEI and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. “We’ve applied generalizable engineering strategies for managing functional complexity to develop CAD-type simulation and modeling tools for designing RNA-based genetic control systems. Ultimately we’d like to develop CAD platforms for synthetic biology that rival the tools found in more established engineering disciplines, and we see this work as an important technical and conceptual step in that direction.” …

RNA nanotechnology has a unique set of advantages as a pathway technology toward atomically precise productive nanosystems that reflect its central role in biological systems. Unlike the simple Watson-Crick base-pair molecular recognition code that underlies DNA nanotechnology, the more complex rules of base-pairing involved in RNA folding allow RNA to fold into compact complex three-dimensional shapes. These shapes are somewhat reminiscent of the complex folds of protein structures, yet the folding rules are considerably simpler than those of proteins. These RNA CAD tools may be an important step toward powerful design tools for folded polymer paths toward molecular machine systems.

A few months ago the use of designed peptides to build supramolecular structures on surfaces was reported. Another group has now reported making two-dimensional atomically precise sheets using peptoids, a class of peptide mimetics in which the side chain is attached to the backbone nitrogen atom instead of to the alpha carbon atom. Such sheets might be useful as templates for assembling other nanostructures. A hat tip to Science Daily for reprinting this news release from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) “Shaken, not stirred: Berkeley Lab scientists spy molecular maneuvers“:

Stir this clear liquid in a glass vial and nothing happens. Shake this liquid, and free-floating sheets of protein-like structures emerge, ready to detect molecules or catalyze a reaction. This isn’t the latest gadget from James Bond’s arsenal—rather, the latest research from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists unveiling how slim sheets of protein-like structures self-assemble. This “shaken, not stirred” mechanism provides a way to scale up production of these two-dimensional nanosheets for a wide range of applications, such as platforms for sensing, filtration and templating growth of other nanostructures.

“Our findings tell us how to engineer two-dimensional, biomimetic materials with atomic precision in water,” said Ron Zuckermann, Director of the Biological Nanostructures Facility at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE nanoscience user facility at Berkeley Lab. “What’s more, we can produce these materials for specific applications, such as a platform for sensing molecules or a membrane for filtration.”

Zuckermann, who is also a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, is a pioneer in the development of peptoids, synthetic polymers that behave like naturally occurring proteins without degrading. His group previously discovered peptoids capable of self-assembling into nanoscale ropes, sheets and jaws, accelerating mineral growth and serving as a platform for detecting misfolded proteins.

In this latest study, the team employed a Langmuir-Blodgett trough — a bath of water with Teflon-coated paddles at either end — to study how peptoid nanosheets assemble at the surface of the bath, called the air-water interface. By compressing a single layer of peptoid molecules on the surface of water with these paddles, said Babak Sanii, a post-doctoral researcher working with Zuckermann, “we can squeeze this layer to a critical pressure and watch it collapse into a sheet.”

“Knowing the mechanism of sheet formation gives us a set of design rules for making these nanomaterials on a much larger scale,” added Sanii. …

The research was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) [abstract]. It will be interesting to see if these peptoid nanosheets can be developed to provide atomically precise surfaces on which other components can be assembled in a defined atomically precise arrangement, as can be done with DNA origami.

Foresight Co-Founder and Past President: Christine L. Peterson was interviewed in the magazine “Future by Semcon“, published by Semcon, “a global technology company active in the areas of engineering services and product information.” The four-page article “Infinite nanotech possibilities” begins on page 34 of the current issue, which is available online. (The issue is presented as it appears in print, so in the “Browse the publication” box click on the “Table of contents”, then the article title, and then the “Go to page” button.) The interview presents a very succinct and easy overview of the current state and future potential of nanotechnology. Christine focuses on the potential of advanced nanotechnology to eliminate chemical pollution through complete control of atomic trajectories during the manufacturing process. She summarizes the progress of nanotechnology as near the end of the first stage of development, the use of nanostructured materials in a variety of applications, and the beginning of the second, the construction of nanodevices and more advanced products. The latter include medical applications, like (much) better detection and treatment of cancer. As Foresight members and Nanodot readers are well aware, however, the real excitement will come when these first two evolutionary stages give way to the third, truly revolutionary stage, the development of advanced nanomachinery for atomically precise manufacturing:

I think in the longer term it will be the way we make our products. It will mean that they incorporate computation, they incorporate the ability to change their shape, they are perhaps multipurpose products. At some point it starts to sound like science fiction, and there is a reason for that. When you look ahead two or three decades, if what you see at that stage does not look like science fiction, then you’re not trying, you’re not thinking ambitiously enough. …

The interview ends with two interesting questions. (1) When can we expect advanced nanomachinery to be commercialized? After acknowledging the range from optimistic to pessimistic predictions: “… let’s say that in 25 years maybe we will see some really dramatic stuff happening.” (2) Will any technologies not be affected in some way by advanced nanotechnology? “… I personally don’t see a technology area that will not be impacted by nanotechnology.” Do these two answers seem on target?

The repertoire of potentially useful molecular switches continues to grow as the components that do the switching shrink. A team of German physicists has used a single electron from the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to transfer a single proton among one of four not quite equivalent positions in the inner cavity of a porphyrin molecule anchored to a silver surface.They have thus demonstrated the smallest conceivable molecular conductance switch. A hat tip to Science Daily for reprinting this press release from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) “Targeted proton transfer within a molecule: The smallest conceivable switch“:

For a long time miniaturization has been the magic word in electronics. Dr. Willi Auwaerter and Professor Johannes Barth, together with their team of physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), have now presented a novel molecular switch in the journal “Nature Nanotechnology.” Decisive for the functionality of the switch is the position of a single proton in a porphyrin ring with an inside diameter of less than half a nanometer. The physicists can set four distinct states on demand.

Porphyrins are ring-shaped molecules that can flexibly change their structure, making them useful for a wide array of applications. Tetraphenylporphyrin is no exception: It likes to take on a saddle shape and is not limited in its functionality when it is anchored to a metal surface. The molecule holds has a pair of hydrogen atoms that can change their positions between two configurations each. At room temperature this process takes place continuously at an extremely rapid rate.

In their experiment, the scientists suppressed this spontaneous movement by cooling the sample. This allowed them to induce and observe the entire process in a single molecule using a scanning tunneling microscope. This kind of microscope is particularly well suited for the task since – in contrast to other methods – it can be used not only to determine the initial and final states, but also allows the physicists to control the hydrogen atoms directly. In a further step they removed one of the two protons from the inside of the porphyrin ring. The remaining proton could now take on any one of four positions. A tiny current that flows through the fine tip of the microscope stimulates the proton transfer, setting a specific configuration in the process.

Although the respective positions of the hydrogen atoms influence neither the basic structure of the molecule nor its bond to the metallic surface, the states are not identical. This small but significant difference, taken together with the fact that the process can be arbitrarily repeated, forms the basis of a switch whose state can be changed up to 500 times per second. A single tunneled electron initiates the proton transfer. …

Perhaps the next step is to see if a number of such molecular switches could be linked and integrated in a nanoscale environment to build a circuit or other functional assemblage. The abstract of the research paper is here.

DEADLINE DECEMBER 31

Our friends over at the Thiel Foundation asked us to help spread the word about their fellowship program, which offers $100,000 grants to innovators age 19 or younger.

If you know of a very bright, energetic, and visionary young person, please bring this opportunity to his or her attention.

Of course, here at Foresight we hope that your protege will work on nanotechnology, and the Thiel Foundation is very interested in this field, but the fellowships are available in a wide range of areas of endeavor.

Below is their message. Think of this as a potentially large holiday gift to the smartest teenager you know!

Another great holiday gift — to yourself and society at large — is your membership in Foresight Institute. Donate by December 31 and your gift will be matched:
http://www.foresight.org/challenge

Best wishes,

Foresight Institute

from the Thiel Foundation:

We’d like to tell you about the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 that lets extraordinary young adults skip college and focus on their work, their research, and their self-education. We are delighted to announce that our friends at the Thiel Foundation are now accepting applications for the 2012 class of Fellows.

The future will not take care of itself. Global prosperity is not inevitable. The world will only get better if visionary people are creative and relentless about solving hard problems.

The 2011 class of Thiel Fellows includes 24 people who are tackling breakthroughs in hardware and robotics, making energy plentiful, making markets more effective, challenging the notion that there is only one way to get an education, and extending the human lifespan. Several of them have already launched companies, secured financing, and won prestigious awards. As they’re demonstrating, you don’t need college to invent the future (you can read about their progress in a recent article in TechCrunch).

If you’re under twenty and love science or technology, we hope you’ll consider joining the 2012 class of fellows. Go to ThielFellowship.org and apply to change the world. There’s no cost to apply, and they’re accepting applications through December 31. Fellows will be appointed this spring and begin two-year fellowships this summer.

If you’re twenty or over, we have a different request. Think of the smartest, most creative person you know who’s 19 or younger. Sit down and talk with that person about her or his goals and interests. For some people, such as future doctors, the time and cost of four years of college may be worth it. But for those who plan to invent things or start companies, starting now may make more sense. If your friend is interested, you might suggest pursuing an innovation or applying to the Thiel Fellowship.

Millions of people enjoy a higher quality of life because smart people like Steve Jobs, Muriel Siebert, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Zuckerberg, and hundreds of others skipped college to start a project that couldn’t wait.

We hope you’ll help me spread the word about the Fellowship. The time for innovation is now.

Please visit ThielFellowship.org to learn more.

The application to colloidal nanoparticles of traditional chemical techniques for controlled corrosion and plating has produced complex multicomponent three-dimensional nanostructures that, while not atomically precise, exhibit a wide range of designed porous and multichamber nanostructures. From ScienceDaily “Carving at the Nanoscale“:

Researchers at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology (ICN) have successfully demonstrated a new method for producing a wide variety of complex hollow nanoparticles. …

After several years of research, scientists of the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology (ICN) … have refined methods based on traditional corrosion techniques (the Kirkendall effect and galvanic, pitting, etching and de-alloying corrosion processes).

They show that these methods, which are far more aggressive at the nanoscale than in bulk materials due to the higher surface area of nanostructures, provide interesting pathways for the production of new and exotic materials. By making simple changes in the chemical environment it is possible to tightly control the reaction and diffusion processes at room temperatures, allowing for high yields and high consistency in form and structure. This should make the processes particularly attractive for commercial applications as they are easily adapted to industrial scales.

A wide range of structures can be formed, including open boxes, bimetallic and trimetallic double-walled open boxes with pores, multiwalled/multichamber boxes, double-walled, porous and multichamber nanotubes, nanoframes, noble metal fullerenes, and others.

The research was published in Science (abstract). A “Perspectives” article about the research is available “Complex Colloidal Assembly“.

A tutorial review (abstract) whose authors include J. Fraser Stoddart, winner of the 2007 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in the Experimental category, asks whether artificial molecular machines can deliver the performance that visionaries expect. From Foresight’s perspective, will it be possible to develop systems of molecular machines capable of programmable, atomically precise manufacture of complex systems and macroscale products, as envisioned in the 2007 Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems? The review addresses fundamental problems on the path from the many simple artificial molecular devices that have been demonstrated to the end goal of effective molecular machine systems, such as whether we can build molecular machines that can operate at all scales from the molecular to the macroscopic, and whether molecular machines can be organized spatially and temporally to accomplish complex tasks. It ends with a mention of the Foresight Institute Feynman Grand Prize. From a Northwest University news release “When Will Artificial Molecular Machines Start Working For Us?“:

Physicist Richard Feynman in his famous 1959 talk, “Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” described the precise control at the atomic level promised by molecular machines of the future. More than 50 years later, synthetic molecular switches are a dime a dozen, but synthetically designed molecular machines are few and far between.

Northwestern University chemists recently teamed up with a University of Maine physicist to explore the question, “Can artificial molecular machines deliver on their promise?” Their provocative analysis provides a roadmap outlining future challenges that must be met before full realization of the extraordinary promise of synthetic molecular machines can be achieved.

The tutorial review is published by the journal Chemical Society Reviews.

The senior authors are Sir Fraser Stoddart, Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry, and Bartosz A. Grzybowski, the K. Burgess Professor of Physical Chemistry, both in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and Dean Astumian, professor of physics at the University of Maine. (Grzybowski is also professor of chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.)

One might ask, what is the difference between a switch and a machine at the level of a molecule? It all comes down to the molecule doing work.

“A simplistic analogy of an artificial molecular switch is the piston in a car engine while idling,” explains Ali Coskun, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart’s laboratory. “The piston continually switches between up and down, but the car doesn’t go anywhere. Until the pistons are connected to a crankshaft that, in turn, makes the car’s wheels turn, the switching of the pistons only wastes energy without doing useful work.”

Astumian points out that this analogy only takes us part of the way to understanding molecular machines. “All nanometer-scale machines are subject to continual bombardment by the molecules in their environment giving rise to what is called ‘thermal noise,’” he cautions. “Attempts to mimic macroscopic approaches to achieve precisely controlled machines by minimizing the effects of thermal noise have not been notably successful.”

Scientists currently are focused on a chemical approach where thermal noise is exploited for constructive purposes. Thermal “activation” is almost certainly at the heart of the mechanisms by which biomolecular machines in our cells carry out the essential tasks of metabolism. “At the nanometer scale of single molecules, harnessing energy is as much about preventing unwanted, backward motion as it is about causing forward motion,” Astumian says.

In order to fulfill their great promise, artificial molecular machines need to operate at all scales. A single molecular switch interfaced to its environment can do useful work only on its own tiny scale, perhaps by assembling small molecules into chemical products of great complexity. But what about performing tasks in the macroscopic world?

To achieve this goal, “there is a need to organize the molecular switches spatially and temporally, just as in nature,” Stoddart explains. He suggests that “metal-organic frameworks may hold the key to this particular challenge on account of their robust yet highly integrated architectures.”

What is really encouraging is the remarkable energy-conversion efficiency of artificial molecular machines to perform useful work that can be greater than 75 percent. This efficiency is quite spectacular when compared to the efficiency of typical car engines, which convert only 20 to 30 percent of the chemical energy of gasoline into mechanical work, or even of the most efficient diesel engines with efficiencies of 50 percent.

“The reason for this high efficiency is that chemical energy can be converted directly into mechanical work, without having to be first converted into heat,” Grzybowski says. “The possible uses of artificial molecular machines raise expectations expressed in the fact that the first person to create a nanoscale robotic arm, which shows precise positional control of matter at the nanoscale, can claim Feynman’s Grand Prize of $250,000.”

This holiday season, you’re invited to join with us in celebrating the following events:

1. Foresight Announces Election of New President Larry Millstein
2. Meet The President: Dinner Reception Monday 12/12, 6:30pm @ Don Giovanni’s in Mountain View, CA
3. Annual Challenge Grant Kickoff: Donate this month for double the value to Foresight!

I. Foresight Announces Election of our New President

Foresight is proud to announce that Larry S. Millstein, Ph.D., J.D. has been elected President of the Institute by the Board of Directors. Larry has been a Foresight member since 1998. He was instrumental in establishing the Foresight Communication Prize in 2000 and in ensuring its funding since then; he has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2009. He has been interested in atomically and molecularly precise technologies for many years – since reading Nanosystems over a decade ago and strengthened by the development of mechanochemistry and the recent commercialization of single molecule DNA sequencing instruments.

“We are thrilled to have persuaded such a technically accomplished and experienced leader to be President of Foresight and to take on the task of accelerating the development of transformative nanotechnologies and their beneficial uses,” said Foresight co-founder and current President Christine Peterson, who will continue to be a member of the Board and active advisor to the Institute and will collaborate closely with senior staff in making the transition.

“I look forward to forging new tools for Foresight to catalyze the development of truly transformative technologies,” Larry says. “Foresight has a key role to play in forcefully communicating the power and potential of atomically precise technologies to transform the world in remarkably beneficial ways, and its activities will be a seminal catalyst for ideas and actions that will — by harnessing the power of atomic precision — realize some of humankind’s most fervently wished for goals.”

Larry has been very active for some time in educating and evangelizing the public on the beauty and power of science, arranging dozens of dinners and lectures with scientists and technologists in the Washington, DC area, particularly at the Cosmos Club. He founded and supports the Zimm Prize in Physical Chemistry at UCSD. He teaches on biotechnology (and on law) at Georgetown University. He developed the Emerging Technologies course there, which recently has been directed to NexGen DNA Sequencing Technologies and Personalized Genomics, and will soon turn to DNA Machines and Synthetic Genomics. He also teaches an introduction to Intellectual Property law to graduate students in the Biotechnology Program at Georgetown.

He is an author of a variety of scientific research articles and an inventor of several nucleic acid amplification methods and of inventions relating to molecular arrays and their manufacture. He has worked with inventors and written and prosecuted many patent applications on inventions in biotechnology and nanotechnology, and he has served in an in-house role for several start up companies.

Larry is a partner in Millen, White, Zelano & Branigan, PC, and Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular & Cellular Biology and Chair of the Biotechnology Program Advisory Board at Georgetown University. He also is Treasurer and a member of the Board of the Washington Academy of Sciences and Program Chair, Past President and member of the Board of the Philosophical Society of Washington.

Larry earned his BS at CCNY-CUNY (Chemistry), his MS and PhD at the University of California-San Diego (Chemistry / Molecular Biology) and the Scripps Research Institute (where he did his graduate research with Joel Gottesfeld). He earned his JD at George Mason University, and is a graduate of the GMU Patent Law Specialty Track Program. He was a research professor at the University of Rochester before turning to law. And, as a lawyer, he was an associate at Foley & Lardner, served as Senior Patent Counsel at Human Genome Sciences, founded Millstein & Taylor and merged it a decade later with Holland & Knight, where he was a partner and led the biotechnology practice. He joined Millen White as a partner in 2008.

II. Meet The President: Dinner Reception Monday 12/12, 6:30pm @ Don Giovanni’s in Mountain View, CA

When: Monday December 12th, 2011, drinks/reception at 6:30, Dinner at 7:15pm
Where: Don Giovanni’s, 235 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA, 94041
RSVP: $40 to foresight@foresight.org via Paypal.com by midnight Saturday, 12/10/11
Meal options: List fish, chicken or vegetarian in your Paypal note!

Join us for an informal celebration reception and dinner with incoming Foresight Institute President Larry S. Millstein in Mountain View on Monday, 12 December 2011. We will be welcoming Larry on his first visit to our offices and chatting with him about his experiences, Foresight’s future and the power in transformative nanotechnology. He is looking forward to meeting members old, new, and prospective while he is here, especially Senior Associates. Please join us as we celebrate this year’s progress, present our thoughts on Foresight’s program for next year — and bring your own ideas and your enthusiasm for Foresight!

III. Annual Challenge Grant Kickoff: Donate this month for double the value to Foresight

This year, Foresight has again received a generous $30,000 Challenge Grant, where every dollar you donate between now and December 31st is matched and doubled.

Do you believe in Foresight’s vision of transformative nanotechnology? Did you enjoy the quality of this year’s conference and dinner lectures? Would you like to see us expand our youth outreach? If you would like to see these re-energized programs take off, now is a great time to support us by making your annual donation, or upgrade your membership.

Please send in your check, dated by Dec 31 to the address below, or donate online at:
http://www.foresight.org/challenge

Foresight Institute
PO Box 61058
Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA
main: 650-289-0860
fax: 650-289-0863

Or to find out more on how to help, contact Desiree Dudley at 650-289-0860, x259 or desiree@foresight.org.

We are excited about our coming year. We hope you are, too!

Come help us create the future.

Christine Peterson, Co-Founder/President
Larry Millstein, President-Elect
Desiree Dudley, Director of Development and Outreach

Eric Drexler presented a lecture at the University of Oxford Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology that addressed two key questions:

• What will be the next great revolution in the material basis of civilization?
• How can we establish reliable knowledge about key aspects of such technologies?

From the news release, aptly titled “The next technological revolution?“:

The key to tackling some of our planet’s greatest challenges may be found in the laws of physics and methods of engineering, as opposed to any specific technological innovation.

Speaking at the inaugural public lecture of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, Dr Eric Drexler said there is a compelling case for the viability of atomically precise manufacturing. This is the process of building structures, tools and machines starting at the molecular level, with atomic precision, to address challenges such as rising greenhouse gases and energy production for our growing population.

In a talk entitled “Exploring a Timeless Landscape: Physical Law and the Future of Nanotechnology”, pioneering nanotechnology researcher Dr. Drexler invited the audience to consider the intriguing possibility of nano-level manufacture of macro-level products. Such a process, if achieved, would be the next great revolution in the material basis of civilization, offering high-performance components, materials or systems and accelerated productivity. …

Those who have read Drexler’s 1988 essay on exploratory engineering and the 2007 Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems will be familiar with the main arguments presented in the talk. Dr. Drexler’s conclusions about the development of atomically precise manufacturing were:

• We now have ample scientific knowledge. Rather than additional breakthroughs we need component design.
• Molecular experiments are fast and inexpensive by ordinary engineering standards.
• Advances in fabrication methods will yield faster more predictable results, accelerating progress.

Dr. Drexler left the audience to consider whether the advent of atomically precise manufacturing meant that in preparing for the 21st century we should expect scarcity and conflict or something radically different, and whether we could change the conversation in the world about the future incrementally in a well-grounded way.

The Oxford Martin Programme has made the abstract available, which includes a link to a Youtube video of the lecture “Timeless Landscape: Physical Law and the Future of Nanotechnology“.

One of the major challenges in using nanomedicine for drug delivery is how to get the nanoparticles carrying the therapeutic drug to release the drug when they arrive at the proper place. Thanks to Jessica Moore of the Center of Excellence in Nanomedicine, University of California, San Diego for sending news of a new polymer that degrades in response to near infrared light. Because near infrared light penetrates several inches through human tissue, it could be used to control the release of drugs from nanoparticles lodged in specific locations. From the American Chemical Society’s press release “New “smart” material could help tap medical potential of tissue-penetrating light“:

… Scientists are reporting development and successful initial testing of the first practical “smart” material that may supply the missing link in efforts to use in medicine a form of light that can penetrate four inches into the human body. …

Adah Almutairi and colleagues explain that near-infrared (NIR) light (which is just beyond what human can see) penetrates through the skin and almost four inches into the body, with great potential for diagnosing and treating diseases. Low-power NIR does not damage body tissues as it passes. Missing, however, are materials that respond effectively to low-power NIR. Plastics that disintegrate when hit with NIR, for instance, could be filled with anti-cancer medicine, injected into tumors, and release the medicine when hit with NIR. Current NIR-responsive smart materials require high-power NIR light, which could damage cells and tissues. That’s why Almutairi’s team began research on development of a new smart polymer that responds to low-power NIR light.

Hit with low-power NIR, their new material breaks apart into small pieces that seem to be nontoxic to surrounding tissue. …

The news section of the journal Science featured an article by Robert F. Service “Building a Breakable Capsule“:

Therapeutic drugs sometimes inflict more damage than they cure. One solution to this problem is to enclose the drugs inside a capsule, shielding them from the body—and the body from them—until they can be released at just the right spot. There are lots of ways to trigger this release, including changing temperature, acidity, and exposure to magnetic fields. But triggers can come with their own risks—burns, for example. Now, researchers in California have designed what could be the most benign trigger to date: shining near-infrared light (NIR) on the encapsulated drug. …

… Almutairi says she and her colleagues plan to test whether the compound is useful for slowly releasing therapeutic proteins into the eye to treat macular degeneration.