Nanoparticles

So the lab I currently work in researches an endogenous, biological capsule that is included in nano research groups. So anyway, UCLA has a nano center, called California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) and they have a periodic lunch seminar. Anyway, today we had the Nanoparticles group lunch seminar, and they had recently received a grant from CEIN, the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology to find new, improved methods for tox screening on new nanomaterials. CEIN supports research that includes new, improved and efficient methods of toxicity assays for nanomaterials, as well as research that looks into environmental and health effects of nanomaterials.

As a side note/fun fact, there are about 30,000 chemicals used in industry today, but only 5,000 have been thoroughly tested for toxicity. The classical method of tox screening is just very slow and expensive. So the nanomaterials approach wants to learn from the failures of chemical tox screening. The investigator today was involved in building high-throughput, inexpensive tox assays to find a good, reliable method of tox screening that also has good predictability (so you can, as accurately as possible, predict behavior of nanomaterials for future reference). The main concern for nanomaterials is the generation of free oxygen radicals, which can go on to cause really bad things for living things such as humans, as well as the environment.

Anyway, so ZnO or zinc oxide is really bad, causes a lot of free oxygen radicals that eventually causes cell apoptosis (cell death). That was the main one among a few others that he talked about. They also look into how to reduce toxicity, such as adding iron to ZnO. Adding up to 10% iron to ZnO makes reduces the toxicity to almost nothing.

So the model that they work with now is more like categorization. They break down different cellular pathways to toxicity, and categorize nanomaterials based on the types of cellular responses they elicit and which pathway they use to kill cells. That way you know how toxic the nanomaterial gets in living systems.

So yeah, it was interesting. They also announced a new grant opening, that came directly from Obama's stimulus package for nano or bio or something research. woohoo! Stimulus in action =P