Seeking the power to heal

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 Seeking the power to heal
RPI researcher reviews work on "paper battery" at NanoBioTech forum
 
By ERIC ANDERSON, Deputy business editor
First published: Tuesday, September 16, 2008

TROY -- When researchers combined the anticoagulant drug heparin with cellulose, they came up with a membrane that could be used in kidney dialysis or other filtering applications.

It was also a step toward developing what has become known as a "paper battery," basically the membrane strengthened with carbon nanotubes that, when folded over, could function as a capacitor or battery, once an electrolyte was added.

   
Robert Linhardt, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, credited students at the school with the observations that led to the device.

Linhardt delivered the opening address at NanoBioTech 2008, a conference held Monday at RPI. The daylong event explored a number of topics, from developments in nanotechnology law to attracting investors and protecting intellectual property.

Speakers came from around the world and from as close as the University at Albany and Albany Law School.

Local speakers included Annette Kahler, director of the Science & Technology Law Center at Albany Law School, and James Castracane, director of the Center for Nanomaterials and Nanoelectronics at UAlbany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Linhardt, whose full title is the Ann and John H. Broadbent Jr. '59 Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering, also touched briefly on his current work to produce synthetic heparin as a safer alternative to that harvested from possibly disease-carrying animals.

Heparin and cellulose, with carbon nanotubes serving as electrodes, are the building blocks of the paper battery. The battery is now being developed further into an energy storage device that could be implanted in the body and provide the power to operate everything from pacemakers to defibrillators and pumps, Linhardt said.

The device could be powered by the body's own fluids, which would serve as the electrolyte.

"You can power it with blood, sweat or tears," he said.

Linhardt's talk also showed some of the possibilities when nanotechnology -- the art and science of building things at the molecular level -- is combined with medicine and biotechnology.

He talked of techniques to administer very high concentrations of anti-cancer agents directly to a targeted organ, then filtering them out to eliminate exposing healthy organs to the toxic drugs.

Raj Bawa, adjunct associate professor at RPI, who chaired the conference, said a number of techniques could be used at the nanoscale to target tumors with drugs. Nanocrystals of a drug could be more soluble and less toxic than larger crystals, making treatment more effective.

He also suggested the possibility of nanomagnetic particles that a patient could ingest. A magnetic field could then be applied to the targeted organ to concentrate the particles, which could include drugs to treat the tumor.

"You treat something locally so you don't have damage to the rest of the body," Bawa said.

Eric Anderson can be reached at 454-5323 or by e-mail at eanderson@timesunion.com.