Drexel receives nanotech funds
Nathan Fried
Issue date: 7/3/09 Section: News
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This past month, the Nanotechnology Institute announced a total of $2 million to be awarded to 30 scientists from five different universities and institutions within the Philadelphia region for research focused on advancing the field.
Of the total amount awarded, Drexel researchers received more than $1 million for projects ranging from tissue engineering to Radio Frequency Identification enhancements. Receiving over half the funds provided by the NTI, Drexel acts as a nanotech leader.
"They know who are the key players, their reputation. We have a lot of very strong research going on at Drexel in the nano-field. We have over 45 faculty who are doing nano-related research and our past success rate speaks for itself," Shirin Karsan, industry liaison for the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, said.
The NTI's main initiative for supplying the funding greatly focuses on a coordinated effort to produce actual applications and intellectual property for the world to use.
"Where there is more collaboration is where they would want to give the funds. Rather than giving it to an independent entity, they want to see collaborations, which in turn maximizes the likelihood of research developing into a reliable technology," Karsan said.
Amongst the Drexel recipients, Wan Shih, associate professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering, received the largest award. In her lab, they are making devices for diagnostic applications.
Her research focuses on a new device to detect antibodies produced by the immune system of breast cancer patients. This is an important step involved in antibody therapy which is an avenue of cancer treatment that focuses on stimulating the patient's own immune system to target and attack tumors.
This new device goes beyond standard lab techniques such as ELISAs and Western Blots which are not sensitive enough to detect some antibodies, or proteins, in blood samples of patients.
"[ELISAs and Western Blots] have a sensitivity around the sub-nanogram/ml. With that kind of sensitivity we can't see if patients have generated their own immune system response," Shih said.
Even further complications arise when trying to analyze blood samples due to the vast amount of protein within blood. Trying to find a low level of a single antibody would be just as difficult as trying to find a single grain of salt in a bowl of flour.
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