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Category: nanotechnology – Page 2

Gene therapy is a technique that rectifies defective or abnormal genes by introducing exogenous genes into target cells to cure the disease. Although gene therapy has gained some accomplishment for the diagnosis and therapy of inherited or acquired cardiovascular diseases, how to efficiently and specifically deliver targeted genes to the lesion sites without being cleared by the blood system remains challenging. Based on nanotechnology development, the non-viral vectors provide a promising strategy for overcoming the difficulties in gene therapy. At present, according to the physicochemical properties, nanotechnology-based non-viral vectors include polymers, liposomes, lipid nanoparticles, and inorganic nanoparticles. Non-viral vectors have an advantage in safety, efficiency, and easy production, possessing potential clinical application value when compared with viral vectors. Therefore, we summarized recent research progress of gene therapy for cardiovascular diseases based on commonly used non-viral vectors, hopefully providing guidance and orientation for future relevant research.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) leads to almost a third of all deaths worldwide, resulting from atherosclerotic plaque leading to hemadostenosis and blood flow restriction (Park et al., 2020; Tsao et al., 2022). Despite progress in medical technology, CVD is still a major cause of death (Yang et al., 2023). Conventional treatment strategies for CVD include anticoagulation, antiplatelet, thrombolytics, hypolipidemic drugs, and invasive therapies like vascular bypass grafting and stent transplantation (Zhu et al., 2021). However, small molecule drug therapy in conventional treatment strategies is characterized by short half-life and low bioavailability, and long-term use of certain drugs may also lead to side effects such as drug resistance and potential hematological toxicity (Missri, 1979; Fu et al., 2014). Surgical treatment, on the other hand, is more pro-traumatic, requires a longer recovery time, and has a high risk of postoperative complications.

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A research team led by Prof. Wang Mingtai at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a finely tuned method for growing titanium dioxide nanorod arrays (TiO2-NA) with controllable spacing without changing individual rod size and demonstrated its application in high-performance solar cells.

Their findings, published in Small Methods, offer a new toolkit for crafting nanostructures across clean energy and optoelectronics.

Single-crystalline TiO2 nanorods excel at harvesting light and conducting charge, making them ideal for solar cells, photocatalysts, and sensors. However, traditional fabrication methods link rod density, diameter, and length—if one parameter is adjusted, the others shift accordingly, often affecting device efficiency.

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The mechanism can also create better biological imaging tools to see deep inside tissues using safer infrared light. It could even cool materials with lasers, by removing thermal energy through UCPL.

“By establishing an intrinsic model of UCPL in single-walled carbon nanotubes, we hope to open up new possibilities for designing advanced optoelectronic and photonic devices,” added Kato.

What the RIKEN scientists have essentially discovered is that one does not need structural defects for up-conversion in carbon nanotubes. Instead, phonons and dark excitons do the trick. This opens up cleaner, more efficient, and more flexible designs for future energy and photonic technologies.

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Vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG) is a nonlinear spectroscopic method widely used to investigate the molecular structure and dynamics of surface systems. However, in far-field observations, the spatial resolution of this method is constrained by the diffraction limit, which restricts its ability to resolve molecular details in inhomogeneous structures smaller than the wavelength of light.

To address this limitation, researchers, Atsunori Sakurai, Shota Takahashi, Tatsuto Mochizuki, and Toshiki Sugimoto, Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), NINS, developed a tip-enhanced VSFG (TE-SFG) spectroscopy system based on scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Using this system, the team detected VSFG signals from molecules adsorbed on a gold substrate under ambient conditions.

The research is published in the journal Nano Letters.

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Two recent advances—one in nanoscale chemistry and another in astrophysics—are making waves. Scientists studying the movement of molecules in porous materials and researchers observing rare cosmic events have uncovered mechanisms that could reshape both industry and our view of the universe.

One of the most promising fields in material science centers on molecular diffusion. This is the way molecules move through small, confining spaces—a key process behind technologies like gas separation, catalysis, and energy storage. Materials called MOFs, short for metal-organic frameworks, have emerged as powerful tools because of their flexible structure and tunable chemistry.

Yet predicting how molecules behave inside these frameworks isn’t simple. Pore size, shape, chemical reactivity, and even how the material flexes all play a role. Studying these factors one by one has been manageable. But understanding how they work together to control molecular flow remains a major hurdle for material designers.

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The field of nanotechnology is still in its nascent stages, but recent innovations are increasingly making this science fiction world of tiny robots into a reality. New breakthrough research from a team at Caltech has demonstrated the ability of a robot made of a single strand of DNA to explore a molecular surface, pick up targeted molecules, and move them to another designated location.

“Just like electromechanical robots are sent off to faraway places, like Mars, we would like to send molecular robots to minuscule places where humans can’t go, such as the bloodstream,” says Lulu Qian, co-author on the paper. “Our goal was to design and build a molecular robot that could perform a sophisticated nanomechanical task: cargo sorting.”

Previous work by a variety of researchers has successfully demonstrated the creation of such DNA robots, but this is the first time they have been shown to pick up and transport specific molecules.

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A research team has developed a high-performance supercapacitor that is expected to become the next generation of energy storage devices. With details published in the journal Composites Part B: Engineering, the technology developed by the researchers overcomes the limitations of existing supercapacitors by utilizing an innovative fiber structure composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and the conductive polymer polyaniline (PANI).

Compared to conventional batteries, supercapacitors offer faster charging and higher power density, with less degradation over tens of thousands of charge and discharge cycles. However, their relatively low energy density limits their use over long periods of time, which has limited their use in practical applications such as and drones.

Researchers led by Dr. Bon-Cheol Ku and Dr. Seo Gyun Kim of the Carbon Composite Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Professor Yuanzhe Piao of Seoul National University (SNU), uniformly chemically bonded single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which are highly conductive, with polyaniline (PANI), which is processable and inexpensive, at the nanoscale.

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The move from two to three dimensions can have a significant impact on how a system behaves, whether it is folding a sheet of paper into a paper airplane or twisting a wire into a helical spring. At the nanoscale, 1,000 times smaller than a human hair, one approaches the fundamental length scales of, for example, quantum materials.

At these length scales, the patterning of nanogeometries can lead to changes in the material properties itself—and when one moves to three dimensions, there come new ways to tailor functionalities, by breaking symmetries, introducing curvature, and creating interconnected channels.

Despite these exciting prospects, one of the main challenges remains: how to realize such complex 3D geometries, at the nanoscale, in ? In a new study, an international team led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids have created three-dimensional superconducting nanostructures using a technique similar to a nano-3D printer.

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Carbyne, a one-dimensional chain of carbon atoms, is incredibly strong for being so thin, making it an intriguing possibility for use in next-generation electronics, but its extreme instability causing it to bend and snap on itself made it nearly impossible to produce at all, let alone produce enough of it for advanced studies. Now, an international team of researchers, including from Penn State, may have a solution.

The research team has enclosed carbyne in —tiny, tube-shaped structures made entirely of carbon that are thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Doing this at low temperatures makes carbyne more stable and easier to produce, potentially leading to new advancements in materials science and technology, the researchers said.

They called the development “promising news,” as scientists have struggled for decades to create a stable form of carbyne in large enough quantities for deeper investigation.

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