News ... National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors

Announcements

Protocell Team Wins $25,000 Prize for Entrepreneurship

Protocell, LLC won first place and a $25,000 Michael Gallegos Prize for Entrepreneurship at the University of New Mexico's 2010 Business Plan Competition. The prize will help the team of inventors and entrepreneurs take the newly invented protocell technology through Phase 1 clinical trials for cancer.

Preliminary evidence suggests that the stability, specificity and cargo capacity of this new class of nanocarriers could make protocells in this class one million times more effective than current delivery methods for the treatment of cancer. The ability of such protocells to deliver large doses of a wide variety of cancer therapies and other therapeutic agents to cancer cells without harming normal cells promises to minimize many of the serious side effects of chemotherapy. What's more, these nanocarriers are so selective that they can even be designed to deliver their cargo to specific parts of the cell, such as the nucleus.

Protocell, LLC will assist in moving this new technology through the clinical testing needed to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use in the treatment of liver cancer, pediatric leukemia, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer and other types of cancer. Perry Bendickson of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck recently donated $3,500 in legal services to support that effort.

Inventors of the novel protocell technology include NCDBN researchers Carlee Ashley and C. Jeffrey Brinker, as well as Xingmao Jiang, Juewen Liu, David Peabody and Walker Wharton.

photo of check being awarded

University of New Mexico Provost Suzanne Ortega (far left) and UNM Anderson School of Management Dean Douglas Brown (far right) award the Michael Gallegos Prize for Entrepreneurship to (center, left to right) James Massengale, Carlee Ashley, and Lindsey Wesenberg. Ashley is an NCDBN investigator and graduate student at the University of New Mexico. Massengale and Wesenberg are business professionals and members of Protocell, LLC.

Synthetic Cells Copycat, Shed New Light on Natural Cells' Ability to Produce Electricity

It's well known that some natural cells, such as those in the nervous system, generate electricity. Yet, scientists still don't completely understand how this happens. Earlier this year, NCDBN researchers David LaVan and Jian Xu described a new technique for constructing simplified synthetic cells that mimic this electricity-producing behavior of natural cells and can be used to help scientists better understand it. Such cells act like batteries and could provide an alternative to conventional solid-state energy-generating devices and other new energy technologies. The details appeared last January in an Advanced Materials article that received widespread coverage in The Economist and Materials Today.

Brinker elected MRS Fellow

NCDBN researcher Jeff Brinker elected 2009 MRS Fellow with the following citation: "For pioneering contributions to sol-gel processing, discovery and development of evaporation induced self-assembly of ordered porous and composite films and particles, and engagement of chemists in materials science."

Poster Award at 2008 Fall meeting of the Materials Research Society

Poster Award at 2008 MRS Carlee Ashley, NCDBN researcher and graduate student at University of New Mexico, won a first place award in the poster competition at the 2008 Fall meeting of the Materials Research Society.

HH13.3 Targeted In-vitro Delivery of a Chemotherapeutic Agent to Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma via a Bacteriophage Carrier. Mekensey Buley¹, Carlee Ashley², David Peabody³ and C. Jeffrey Brinker^2,4;

¹Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma; ²Chemical Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico; ³Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico; ⁴Self-Assembled Materials, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Mekensey Buley was an NSF REU student in the Brinker group during the implementation of this project. She worked under the direct mentorship of Carlee Ashley. Carlee Ashley is a graduate student in Chemical Engineering at UNM. She was the prime author of the poster and prime intellectual driver of the specific work described. David Peabody is Professor of Genetics and Microbiology at UNM and provided guidance on the specific molecular biology aspects of the work. C. Jeffrey Brinker is Professor of Chemical Engineering at UNM and Director of the Self-Assembled Materials Laboratory at Sandia, and provided guidance on the materials science aspect of the project.

Presentation Award at the 83rd Regional Meeting of the AAAS

NCDBN researcher Sameer Varma, postdoc at Sandia National Labs, was award the Donald J. Nash Memorial Outstanding Presentation Award at the 83rd Regional Meeting of the AAAS (American Association for the advancement of Science), April 9-12, 2008.

Varma, Sameer* (Sandia National Laboratories), Susan B. Rempe (Sandia National Laboratories), and Dubravko Sabo (Sandia National Laboratories), "MECHANISMS OF ION RECOGNITION BY BIOLOGICAL MOLECULES," 83rd Regional Meeting of the AAAS, 2008.

Past Announcements

NIH Call for Clinical Collaborations

The network of NIH Nanomedicine Development Centers requests letters from clinical investigators interested in collaborating in the nanomedicine research enterprise. Clinical investigators, with ongoing preclinical/translational research programs, will be expected to participate in the activities of one or more of the NIH Nanomedicine Development Centers (NDC) and to explore opportunities for potential medical applications that build on the science emerging from one or more of the centers. Approximately $2,000,000 annually for two years will be available to support three to five projects from clinical collaborators. See http://www.nanomedcenter.org/funding for more information.

Professor Jakobsson gives NCDBN talk at Beckman Institute

Eric Jakobsson, PI and Director, NIH Roadmap National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors will discuss current research and seek active collaboration with relevant translational and clinical researchers, both to apply our technologies to focused medical research, and also to help us direct our future basic science and technology activities in ways that will ultimately result in effective therapeutic interventions. Talk Details.

Nano-bio Summer School : July 31-August 10, 2007

This summer, on the campus of the University of Illinois, the NCDBN and NCN@UIUC will hold a scientific meeting on "Experimental and Computational Approaches to Understanding Membrane Assemblies and Permeation," a nanoHUB user forum, and a summer school on "Multiscale Theory, Simulation, and Reality at the Nano-Bio Interface" and the nanoHUB. Together, these will create a two-week community for learning, sharing, and doing multiscale simulation with emphasis on applications in biology.

For more information and an application, please see the Meeting and Summer School flyer or http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/nanobio.

Nanobiology and Nanomedicine subgroup of the Biophysical Society

The National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors is leading a movement to request the formation of a Nanobiology and Nanomedicine subgroup of the Biophysical Society. As per the BPS web site: "New subgroups may be formed by petition, signed by at least 100 regular members. The petition and accompanying bylaws need to be approved by Council." Please download the proposed bylaws (PDF) and petition (PDF) and return to:

Dave Mattson
3217 Beckman Institute
405 N. Mathews, Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801

IEEE Conference on Nano/Molecular Medicine and Engineering

The 1st IEEE International Conference on Nano/Molecular Medicine and Engineering (IEEE-NANOMED) will be held in Macau SAR, China, in summer of 2007.

Media Hits

The following is a list of media articles about the research of the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors. As these articles are on external sites, some may require a one-time free registration.