Nanoparticles On My Mind

By Kim Bellard, March 24, 2021

Nanoparticles are everywhere! By that I mean, of course, that there seems to be a lot of news about them lately, particularly in regard to health and healthcare. But, of course, literally they could be anywhere and everywhere, which helps account for their potential, and their potential danger.

Let’s start with one of the more startling developments: a team at the University of Miami’s College of Engineering, led by Professor Sakhrat Khizroev, believes it has figured out a way to use nanoparticles to “talk” to the brain without wires or implants. They use “a novel class of ultrafine units called magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENPs)” to penetrate the blood-brain barrier.

Professor Khizroev has been working on the technology for over a decade, and has received funding from Darpa as part of its Next Generation Non-surgical Neurotechnology (N3) program (also known as BrianSTORMs), the goal of which is “to develop high-performance, bi-directional brain-machine interfaces for able-bodied service members.” The team got Phase II funding last November in order to build working devices.

“Right now, we’re just scratching the surface,” Dr. Khizroev says. “We can only imagine how our everyday life will change with such technology.” Some of what he does imagine, though, is:

We will learn how to treat Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and even depression. Not only could it revolutionize the field of neuroscience, but it could potentially change many other aspects of our health care system.

Lest anyone think this is either an easy or a solved problem, Darpa points out: “N3 researchers are working to develop solutions that address challenges such as the physics of scattering and weakening of signals as they pass through skin, skull, and brain tissue, as well as designing algorithms for decoding and encoding neural signals that are represented by other modalities such as light, acoustic, or electro-magnetic energy.”

But that’s not all the nanoparticle news from just this week. In no particular order:

· Researchers from Cleveland Clinic and Chungbuk National University tested a COVID-19 vaccine (on ferrets) using antigens attached to nanoparticles.

· Another research team, from Scripps and Temple, also tested using nanoparticles to deliver antigens for COVID-19, using three self-assembling protein nanoparticle (SApNP) platforms

· A research team at the University of Manchester used nanoparticles to discover previously unseen blood markers: This might allow earlier and more definitive diagnoses of Alzheimer’s.

· A research team at the University of Science and Technology China are testing “acid-responsive nanoparticles composed solely of membrane-disruptive macromolecules” to treat pancreatic cancer.

· Russian and Israeli researchers “have developed hybrid nanostructured particles that can be magnetically guided to the tumor, tracked by their fluorescence and pushed to release the drug on demand by ultrasound.

· Another Chinese research team is using nanoparticles to deliver antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) for the treatment of deep infections.

· An international team of researchers assert: “The potential of nanotechnology in fighting this deadly disease [COVID-19] has not only been realized in context of developing a nano-vaccine but by delivering the nano-based anti-viral agents.”

· Spanish researchers have been able to observe autonomous nanobots in vivo — inside the bladders of a living mouse — using Positron Emission Tomography (PET).

Again, that’s just this week, and only health-related nano news.

I’m no expert on nanoparticles, or any kind of nanotechnology. I understand that the technology has a long way to go yet. I realize that there are risks, included unintended health effects, to using nanotechnology. All that being said, too much of our health treatments are “shotgun” approaches that often cause as much collateral damage as beneficial impacts. Nanoparticles offer the promise of “rifle” approaches that offer precise targeting — like using smart bombs instead of carpet bombing.

Within my lifetime, and hopefully within the decade, we’ll have nano-delivered drugs that will greatly increase their efficacy. We’ll have nanobots swimming around in us, for a variety of therapeutic purposes. And we should have nanoparticle mediated brain-computer interfaces too.

Exciting stuff.

This post is an abridged version of the original posting in Medium. Please follow Kim on Medium and on Twitter (@kimbbellard)