Bendable Microchips Could Make Smarter Sensors. The Belgian semiconductor research center IMEC has developed a way to put integrated circuits into flexible and stretchable materials without impairing the microchip’s functionality.
The technique could lead to more sophisticated biomedical implants or electronics embedded in clothing. Flexible electronics usually consist of circuits made up of individual components embedded in an elastic material and connected together by stretchable interconnects. This approach can create basic circuits capable of, for example, simple sensing functions. Jan Vanfleteren, an electrical engineer at the Interuniversity Micro Electronics Centre at the University of Ghent, in Belgium, has developed a new approach. It involves “thinning” an off-the-shelf microchip from 725 micrometers down to just 30 micrometers using a conventional grinding process.
Vanfleteren presented a prototype flexible microcontroller at the Electronics and System Integration Technology Conference in Amsterdam last month. Fine-tuning Nanotech to Target Cancer. Programmable particle: Bind’s drug-delivery nanoparticle (artist’s rendering).
The results of the human trials are startling. Even at a lower-than-usual dose, multiple lung metastases shrank or even disappeared after one patient received only two-hour-long intravenous infusions of an experimental cancer drug. Another patient saw her cervical tumor reduce by nearly 60 percent after six months of treatment. Though the drug trial—by Bind Biosciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts—of an experimental nanotechnology-based technique was designed simply to show whether the technology is safe, the encouraging results revive hopes that nanomedicine could realize its elusive promise.
For more than a decade, researchers have been trying to develop nanoparticles that would deliver drugs more effectively and safely. “We make hundreds of combinations to evaluate in order to optimize the performance of each drug,” says Jeff Hrkach, senior vice president of technology research and development. Nano rescues skin. Public release date: 16-Mar-2012 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Mihaela D.
Leonidamleonida@fdu.edu 201-692-2338Inderscience Publishers Nanoparticles containing chitosan have been shown to have effective antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus saprophyticus and Escherichia coli. The materials could be used as a protective wound-healing material to avoid opportunistic infection as well as working to facilitate wound healing. Chitosan is a natural, non-toxic and biodegradable, polysaccharide readily obtained from chitin, the main component of the shells of shrimp, lobster and the beak of the octopus and squid. Now, Mihaela Leonida of Fairleigh Dickinson University, in Teaneck, New Jersey and colleagues writing in the International Journal of Nano and Biomaterials describe how they have prepared nanoparticles of chitosan that could have potential in preventing infection in wounds as well as enhancing the wound-healing process itself by stimulating skin cell growth.
Living Microbot to Detect Diseases Within the Human Body. Scientists are in the process of developing tiny bot prototype that act like a living organism to spot diseases within the human body.
Called Cyberplasm, it will combine advanced microelectronics with latest research in biomimicry (technology inspired by nature). Add to it an electronic nervous system, 'eye' and 'nose' sensors derived from mammalian cells, as well as artificial muscles that use glucose as an energy source to propel it. "Nothing matches a living creature's natural ability to see and smell its environment and therefore to collect data on what's going on around it," says bioengineer Daniel Frankel of Newcastle University, who is leading the UK-based work.
"We're currently developing and testing Cyberplasm's individual components," says Frankel. "We hope to get to the assembly stage within a couple of years. The UK-based work is taking place at Newcastle University. Cyberplasm will mimic key functions of the sea lamprey, a creature found mainly in the Atlantic Ocean.