CRISPR-based genome editing has the potential to treat many human genetic diseases, but achieving stable, efficient and safe in vivo delivery remains a challenge. This Review assesses current delivery systems for genome editors—focusing on adeno-associated viruses and lipid nanoparticles—and highlights data from recent clinical trials. Emerging delivery systems and ongoing challenges in the field are discussed.
Magnetic skyrmions have received much attention as promising, topologically protected quasiparticles with applications in spintronics. Skyrmions are small, swirling topological magnetic excitations with particle-like properties. Nevertheless, the lower stability of magnetic skyrmions only allow them to exist in a narrow temperature range, with low density of the particles, thus implying the need for an external magnetic field, which greatly limits their wider applications.
In a new report published in Science Advances, Yuzhu Song and a team of researchers formed high-density, spontaneous magnetic biskyrmions without a magnetic field in ferrimagnets via the thermal expansion of the lattice.
The team noted a strong connection between the atomic-scale ferrimagnetic structure and nanoscale magnetic domains in a ferrimagnet compound by using neutron powder diffraction and Lorentz transmission electron microscopy measurements.
Vanderbilt researchers have developed a way to more quickly and precisely trap nanoscale objects such as potentially cancerous extracellular vesicles using cutting-edge plasmonic nanotweezers.
The practice by Justus Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering, and Chuchuan Hong, a recently graduated Ph.D. student from the Ndukaife Research Group, and currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Northwestern University, has been published in Nature Communications.
Optical tweezers, as acknowledged with a 2018 Physics Nobel Prize, have proven adept at manipulating micron-scale matter like biological cells. But their effectiveness wanes when dealing with nanoscale objects. This limitation arises from the diffraction limit of light that precludes focusing of light to the nanoscale.
Scientists and engineers keep developing ever faster and more powerful technological devices. But there is a need for even faster and more efficient electronics. A promising route is to take advantage of terahertz waves, a less-explored part of the electromagnetic spectrum nestled between the infrared and microwave regions. Terahertz waves are uniquely sensitive to charge carriers in conducting systems, proving a powerful probe to understand the magnetic properties of new materials.
The quest for ultrafast electronics and coherent terahertz sources can be significantly aided by the precise and ultrafast control of light-induced charge currents at nanoscale interfaces.
Existing methods, including inverse spin-Hall effect (ISHE), inverse Rashba–Edelstein effect, and inverse spin-orbit-torque effect, convert longitudinally injected spin-polarized currents from magnetic materials to transverse charge currents, thus generating terahertz waves. However, these relativistic mechanisms rely on external magnetic fields and suffer from low spin-polarization rates and relativistic spin-to-charge conversion efficiencies characterized by spin-Hall angle.
Breast cancer in its various forms affects more than 250,000 Americans a year. One particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat type is triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which lacks specific receptors targeted by existing treatments. The rapid growth and metastasis of this cancer also make it challenging to manage, leading to limited therapy options and an often poor prognosis for patients.
A promising new approach that uses minuscule tubes to deliver cancer-fighting drugs directly to the tumor site while preserving healthy cells has been developed by Johns Hopkins engineers. The team’s research appeared in Nanoscale.
“In this paper, we showed that we can use nanotubes to specifically target both proliferating and senescent TNBC cells with chemotherapeutics and senolytics, killing them without targeting healthy breast cells,” said Efie Kokkoli, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, a core researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, and a specialist in engineering targeted nanoparticles for the delivery of cancer therapeutics.
Posted in nanotechnology
The largest nanoscience and nanotechnology conference in the world took place again after a four-year hiatus.
The Video Assistant Referees (VAR) was made official by the FIFA for the World Cup in Russia in order to end the refereeing controversies. this system is considered a total justice for football, VAR and the anti-dopping system have an Achilles’heel: The mind control with brain nanobots. Mind control is a reductive process in which a man is reduced to an animal, machine or slave. Nowadays, the mind control could be developed with invasive neurotechnology as brain nanobots that can control directly the activity of victim neurons stimulating or inhibiting them and thus, control different body’s functions like the motor functions. It could be used by nanomafias in sports like soccer and could being applied on football players of the teams that are participating, nowadays, in the current world cup. The FIFA should be prepared to avoid the mental control and the illicit use of brain nanobots, as they are regarding drugs using the anti-dopping in order to get the justice in world football.
Keywords: nanotechnology, brain, internet, interface brain-machine, crime, soccer.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup is the 21st FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial international football that is organized by FIFA. It is currently ongoing in Russia starting from 14 June and will end with the final match on 15 July 2018. The Video Assistant Referees (VAR) was made official by the FIFA for the World Cup in Russia in order to end the refereeing controversies. The FIFA implemented the VAR that is a live support system for referees, which gives them the option of changing decisions that could influence in the scoreboard or in the match incidences although this system is considered the final point for the controversies in refereeing decisions and represent for FIFA and most analysts, a total justice for football.1 The VAR and the anti-dopping system have an Achilles’ heel.
Zhiling Guo, a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham outlines research into how nanomaterials found in consumer and health-care products can pass from the bloodstream to the brain side of a blood-brain barrier model with varying ease depending on their shape. A new study reveals that this may create potential neurological impacts that could be both positive and negative.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2021/07/nanomateria…study.aspx
Metal-enhanced photoluminescence is able to provide a robust signal even from a single emitter and is promising in applications in biosensors and optoelectronic devices. However, its realization with semiconductor nanocrystals (e.g., quantum dots, QDs) is not always straightforward due to the hidden and not fully described interactions between plasmonic nanoparticles and an emitter. Here, we demonstrate nonclassical enhancement (i.e., not a conventional electromagnetic mechanism) of the QD photoluminescence at nonplasmonic conditions and correlate it with the charge exchange processes in the system, particularly with high efficiency of the hot-hole generation in gold nanoparticles and the possibility of their transfer to QDs.
Inspired by the flexible joints of humans, the scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), of the Chinese Academy of Science, led by Prof. Wu Dong, proposed a two-in-one multi-material laser writing strategy that creates the joints from temperature-sensitive hydrogels as well as metal nanoparticles.
