Gold Innovations Blog » Biomedical

Antimicrobial gold

Trevor Keel — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:48:02 +0000

This paper from Professor Carole Perry’s lab at Nottingham Trent University has been getting a lot of press attention this week, for good reason. The article describes the development of a method which allows the generation of gold nanoparticles tethered to the antibiotic Cefaclor which is known to neutralise dangerous bacteria such as Escherichia Coli (E Coli). The real promise lies in the fact that these functionalised GNPs could then be inpregnated into various materials, potentially offering all sorts of robust antibacterial surfaces.

Professor Perry will be presenting this work at the Fall ACS meeting in a couple of weeks time in Boston. I will also be attending the meeting, so drop me a line if you are attending and want to meet up.

Golden beam pen arrays

Trevor Keel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:02:28 +0000

Chad Mirkin’s group at Northwestern always seem to come up with elegent ideas, and this latest one is no different. Follwing on from the group’s development of polymer-pen lithography (PPL) in 2008 and Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN) in 1999, Beam-Pen lithography uses an array of tiny pyramidal pens made of a gold coated polymer to print patterns over large areas with nanoscopic through macroscopic resolution. The team used the technology to print the Chicago skyline 15,000 times in the space of just a few square centimetres, as shown above.

Such miniturisation technologies have great potential in a range of fields including medical diagnostics and new electronic devices

Kavli lectureship article published

Trevor Keel — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:16:33 +0000

Last year Chad Mirkin of Northwestern was awarded the 2009 Kavli prize for his work in the field of nanoscience. He delivered his award lecture at the 2009 Fall MRS meeting in Boston, and has now published an article based on the lecture in this month’s MRS Bulletin. It’s well worth a look as it covers much of his group’s work using gold nanoparticles, and how this research is moving on to deliver novel applications in all areas of materials science.

Another great meeting…

Trevor Keel — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:18:31 +0000

Further to my post at the end of last week I’ve been made aware of another great MRS-backed meeting in Denver this October. Organised by Laura Fabris of Rutgers University in NY, Functionalized Nanobiomaterials for Medical Applications will bring together a raft of gold nanoparticle experts including Mike Natan of Oxonica, Vince Rotello of UMass and Cathy Murphy of South Carolina. Registration opens this month, so check the MRS website or drop Laura a line for more information

BioNano@Nice2011

Trevor Keel — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:28:51 +0000

There’s a great looking symposium currently being pulled together as part of next year’s e-MRS meeting in Nice by Dr Raphael Levy of the University of Liverpool. The session will focus on bionanomaterials for imaging, sensing and actuating and features a quality line up of speakers including Molly Stevens from Imperial, Catherine Murphy from Illinois and Mathias Brust from Liverpool. Take a look Rapha’s blog for more details

Final day – SERS, lobsters and many new friends

Trevor Keel — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:21:46 +0000

Having never attended a Gordon conference before, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect – they are generally considered to be as good as it gets, and my expectations were high. I wasn’t disappointed! It really was an excellent meeting, bringing together many famous faces and rising stars of the field. But best of all was the student/postdoc involvement – every poster session had a real buzz to it, and I know for a fact some exciting collaborations were formed.

Teri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica) deserve a mention at this point – they conceived the event, and undoubtedly spent countless hours organising, planning, promoting and generally worrying about it. But it paid off, and every single person I spoke with said how much they thought of the meeting.

A quirky (and I think very sensible) part of the final day was spent discussing the next meeting. The first question was ‘should there be one?’ and the response to this was a unanimous ‘yes’. The location is likely to be the USA again (with Europe as a possibility). Michael becomes the chair, and Francesco Stellacci of MIT was voted into the vice chair position. We will work with Michael to ensure GOLD2012 and GRC2012 do not clash.

Scientifically, the day kicked of with talks under the banner of ‘Nanoparticles, the environment and energy’. Consideration was first given to safety, with presentations from Jim Hutchinson and Catherine Murphy. Plasmonics presentations followed with Stephan Link and Sang-Hyan Oh talking. The evening session focused exclusively on single molecule sensing and SERS, much of which was well beyond me scientifically but it provoked some great debate in the lecture theatre.

The final meal was pretty special too – keeping with the old GRC North Eastern tradition whole lobsters were served. They were so delicious a few attendees were caught going back for seconds, however I will of course never name names…

High spirits

Trevor Keel — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:40:13 +0000

Victories for England and the USA in the world cup (and progression for both into the knock out stages) have meant 90% of the GRC attendees are either happy (American colleagues) or relieved (me)!

Meanwhile, the conference has continued just as it started, with superb talks and posters. This morning’s session focused on the biomedical applications of noble metal nanoparticles, chaired by Naomi Halas from Rice. Talks from Rebekah Drezek, Jin Zhang and Kimberley Hamad-Schiffer were excellent, each stimulating considerable discussion. Last night saw the second poster session, with nice contributions from Laura Fabris, Katherine Koen and prize winner Kimberley Hamad-Schiffer.

Evening session and posters (1)

Trevor Keel — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:37:26 +0000

After a free afternoon, Monday’s poster session got underway. The work was of an incredibly high standard, and most of the presenters spent practically the entire 2 hours talking to interested attendees. A number of the posters stood out for me, including offerings from Jon Edgar at University of Technology, Sydney, Emily Day from Rice, Duncan Dam of Northwestern and finally the day’s prize winner ($500!) Ali Coskun of Northwestern. Congratulations to him.

After a good meal we heading back to the lecture theatre for the evening session. Here Bartosz Grybowski of Northwestern gave a fascinating overview of his team’s work in designing nanoparticle assemblies which can be used as chemical amplifiers and advanced drug delivery systems. After this we returned for a final hour of poster discussions over a couple of well earned Sam Adams. A great day!

Kick off

Trevor Keel — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:01:56 +0000

The meeting in (baking) Boston has got off to a great start – last night we saw 2 excellent plenary lectures from Mostafa El-Sayed and Chad Mirkin. Much to my delight both leaned heavily towards discussing new applications in materials science, biology and therapeutics. The talks were followed by lively discussion over a few pale ales in the bar.

This morning’s session focused on recent advances in the synthesis of nobel metal nanoparticles. Particular highlights for me were Francesco Stellacci’s work on ligand coated GNPs and Juergen Biener’s discussion of nanoporous gold.

It has been a great start to the week!

Gordon Research Conference

Trevor Keel — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:13:08 +0000

Next week sees the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Nobel Metal Nanoparticles take place near Boston. The GRCs are world-renowned for attracting the very best speakers, and this is certainly true of next week’s meeting with keynotes from the likes of Mostafa El-Sayed (Georgia Tech) and Chad Mirkin (Northwestern). Chaired by Terri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica), the event promises to be a key meeting in the field.

The World Gold Council were delighted to be given the opportunity to part-sponsor the event. I will blog every day next week with updates from the meeting