News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a set of enzyme-targeting nanoscale tools to monitor cancer progression and treatment response in real time, map enzyme activity to precise locations within a tumor, and isolate relevant cell populations for analysis. The tests rely on nanoparticles that interact with tumor proteins. The nanoparticles are coated with peptides (short protein fragments) that target these proteins. When the nanoparticles arrive at a tumor site, the peptides are cut and release biomarkers that can be detected in the urine.

Engineers and scientists from Rice University and Princeton University have discovered a low-energy, one-step photocatalytic method that uses gold nanoparticles to convert the problematic industrial pollutant hydrogen sulfide into valuable hydrogen gas and sulfur. According to the researchers, the remediation process could wind up having low enough implementation costs and high enough efficiency to become economical for cleaning up nonindustrial hydrogen sulfide from sources like sewer gas and animal wastes.

In a collaborative effort by cancer specialists and chemists, researchers from the University of Chicago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Peking University, and Tsinghua University have formulated an advanced type of nanoparticle that carries a compound derived from bacteria to target a potent immune system pathway. The nanoparticles disrupt a tumor’s blood vessel structure and stimulate an immune response. This approach also helps overcome resistance to immunotherapy treatments in certain pancreatic tumors and boosts response to radiation therapy in gliomas (tumors that occur in the brain and spinal cord).

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a technique for precisely controlling the arrangement and placement of nanoparticles on a material, like the silicon used for computer chips, in a way that does not damage or contaminate the surface of the material. The technique, which combines chemistry and directed assembly processes with conventional fabrication techniques, enables the efficient formation of high-resolution, nanoscale features integrated with nanoparticles for sensors, lasers, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which could boost their performance.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that vertically oriented aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes retained very high quality when increasing precursor concentration (the initial carbon) up to 30-fold, the catalyst substrate area from 1 to 180 square centimeters, growth pressure 40-fold and gas flow rates up to 8-fold. The scientists derived a kinetics model showing that the growth kinetics can be accelerated by using a lighter bath gas to help precursor diffusion and that byproduct formation could be greatly mitigated by using a hydrogen-free growth environment.

Researchers from Arizona State University, the University of California, Davis, Washington State University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center in Taiwan have developed a new method to anchor single atoms of platinum-group metals on nanometer-sized islands, which could allow the efficient use of these expensive metals as catalysts for a wide variety of applications. The numerous islands lie on a commercial silicon-dioxide support that is widely used in many common catalytic reactions, but the metal atoms are excluded from the support.

Researchers from Northwestern University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have made a significant advance in the way they produce exotic open-framework superlattices made of hollow metal nanoparticles. Using tiny hollow particles and modifying them with appropriate sequences of DNA, the team found they could synthesize open-channel superlattices with pores ranging from 10 to 1,000 nanometers in size. This newfound control over porosity will enable researchers to use these colloidal crystals in molecular absorption and storage, separations, chemical sensing, and catalysis.

Researchers at Oregon State University, Oregon Health & Science University, and Duke University have taken a key step toward improving and lengthening the lives of cystic fibrosis patients, who experience chronically clogged airways and a dramatically shortened life expectancy. The team of scientists and clinicians engineered inhalable lipid nanoparticles that can effectively deliver messenger RNA (mRNA) to the lungs, prompting lung cells to manufacture the protein that thwarts the disease. 

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have reviewed the many facets of nucleic acid nanotechnology and concluded that the technology holds the most promise for bridging the world of biology and semiconductors. Although the intriguing possibilities that nucleic acid nanotechnology offers have inspired and attracted researchers worldwide, economics must be considered when predicting the impact of this nanotechnology, the researchers emphasized.

Researchers from Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania have developed a special coating that could help curtail the increasing electromagnetic interference that comes with the proliferation of electronic devices. The researchers discovered that combining MXene, a two-dimensional material they discovered more than a decade ago, with a conductive element, called vanadium, in a polymer solution produces a coating that can absorb, entrap, and dissipate the energy of electromagnetic waves at greater than 90% efficiency.