This week in Nano: Week 11 (March 9th-15th)

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) have published the proceedings of a technical interchange meeting held last September entitled “Realizing the Promise of Carbon Nanotubes: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Pathway to Commercialization". The report can be found on their website here. The blog from Frogheart gives it a good overview of the report and is well worth the read.

A research team at Houston Methodist Research Institute successfully used magnetic nanoparticles to destroy blood clots. The study entitled “TPA Immobilization on Iron Oxide Nanocubes and Localized Magnetic Hyperthermia Accelerate Blood Clot Lysis” was published online in Advanced Functional Materials and it reports the 'loading' of magnetic nanoparticles (20 nm clustered iron oxide nanocubes) with drugs (tissue plasminogen activator tPA). The resultant nanomaterial were found capable of dissolving clots 100 to 1,000 times faster (tested in virto) than a commonly used techniques (i.e thrombolytic's). tPA on its own is usually short lived in a patients blood stream and can cause adverse reactions however this study overcomes this by loading the tPA into nanomaterials that are first albumin coated

A trending headline in Nano circles this week is the news that 'Sweet Nanoparticels Target Stroke'. It is referring to a paper published in Experimental Neurology this week called 'Fullerenols and glucosamine fullerenes reduce infarct volume and cerebral inflammation after ischemic stroke in normotensive and hypertensive rats.' (Paywalled). Basically describes how materials resulting from chemical bonding of a sugar with a kind of nanoparticle may help reduce cell damage and inflammation occurring after stroke potentially leading to new drugs for cerebrovascular injury.