The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a think tank based in Washington DC did a survey and found that there are more commercially available nanotech products.

Maynard and his co-workers found 212 products that use nanotechnology. This is double the number found by a similar survey carried out last year by EmTech Research, a pro-industry research group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Nearly half of these products were creams, cosmetics and supplements, designed to be applied to the skin or taken orally.

Nanobio is but a small subset of nanotech, but the increasing commercial viability has to be a good sign for the field.

Nature article (subscription required).

There is increasing interest in the field of nanobiology.  Moving fabrication down to the scale of biological systems is an absolute prerequisite for a lot of biomimetics.

The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany-State University of New York and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University today announced a new partnership to advance education and research in the cross-disciplinary fields of nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine.

…the two institutions will focus on educational and research programs designed “to advance medical science and the treatment of persons suffering from injury and disease by understanding the pathophysiology of specific diseases at the molecular scale.”

UAlbany CNSE enters NanoBio alliance with Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Researchers at Rice University’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology is spear heading an effort to understand the toxicological effects of what will certainly be a huge health issue in the coming decades – nanoparticles.  These tiny (nanometer scale) particles are not usually simple beads, but rather a complex structure with surface chemistry and complex shapes.  She and colleagues aim to figure out what the unintended side effects of exposure is as well as characterizing the size and shape as they relate to a living system.   One of the striking things here is that they will only accept materials to test for which the manufacturer can supply a gram of particles.  This is an astonishingly large quantity and is a smart cut off.  If less than this amount is available then it is probably not yet worth trying to assess the effects on physiology.

Article

In addition to the NanoBio conference in San Francisco there is the European NanoBio Europe meeting in Grenoble. 

 As a merger of the NanoBioTec - Congress and Exhibition (Münster since 2001) and the NanoBiotechnologies X-France (Paris2001, Grenoble2003, Nice2005) we NanoBio-Europe we are proud to present the second annual international conference on Nanobiotechnology in Europe, the “NanoBio-Europe’06“.

Conference website

The 2006 international congress has been announced.  It is in San Francisco and will certainly have some good, cutting edge research presentations. Their definition :

Nanobiotechnology is a specialized field of nanotechnology, focusing on the improved and novel physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials at the nanoscale . Nanomedicine has potential impact on the prevention, early and reliable diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

Example session topics include:

The Congress Website

Nanobiotechnology is a specialized field of nanotechnology, focusing on the improved and novel physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials at the nanoscale . Nanomedicine has potential impact on the prevention, early and reliable diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. It is at this size scale – about 100 nanometers or less – that biological molecules and structures inside living cells operate.

Scientists have developed analytical tools to examine the biological cells in great details. We now understand how biological structures function in general intracellular level. However, we still do not know how to build nanostructures or “nano” biomachines that are compatible with living tissues, so that they safely operate inside the body. Once these questions are answered, we will be able to design better diagnostic tools and engineer structures for better treatments of diseases.

The NanoBio 2006 conference will feature the state-of-the-art scientific development in the emerging field of Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine. Some example of topics including:

• Targeted nano delivery systems for drugs and genes
• Minimally invasive diagnostic methods
• Nano Bio Structural Modeling
• Regenerative Nanomedicine
• Nanobiological assemblies
• In vivo medical imaging
• Biodection
• Nanopatterning
• Nanotoxicology
• Standardization
• Regulatory
  

Important Dates:

• Abstract Deadline: February 15, 2006
• Acceptance of Abstracts: February 28, 2006
• Deadline for Manuscript of the Proceeding: April 1, 2006
• Pre-registration: April 15, 2006
• NanoBio Workshop, Reception: June 18, 2006
• NanoBio Conference: June 19-21

Not much here at the site yet, but the National Institutes of Health Eye Institute has awarded $6.5 million dollars to form a National Center for Biomimetic Nanoconductors.  The research will primarily focus on implantable devices to improve or restore vision.

Sandia National Labs and others are part of the effort and the first announcement of the project talks about a nanoscale battery that would be implanted in the eye to power an artificial retina.

Center Website

Nanobattery press release

The Innos R&D company announced its first nanoscale patterning breakthrough at the Southhampton University nanofab facility..  Darren Bagnall has patterned silicon after the structure of a night flying moth cornea.  The moth cornea allows very little light to escape making it an excellent anti-reflective coating. 

Press release

Bagnall’s Homepage

Flow through biological nanotubes - blood vessels for example - happens with very little resistance. Imitating this low resistance in very small pipes has been elusive.  Bruce Hinds’ group has made a major advance by treating the nanotube core to make it highly hydrophobic. This apparently changes the flow regime in the tube dropping resistance by 5 fold over expectations from theory.  The tubes do seem to clog up pretty quickly, but this is a very promising first step.

PubMed Abstract

Ilya mentioned a recent article on a chemical/MEMs approach to mimicking the gecko foot pad. The gecko adhesion system has a lot to recommend it: the adhesive is dry, sticks to just about anything, does not get dirty and easily detaches. The process is really well understood at this point – tiny spatulate hairs allow the foot pad to conform so closely to the surface that van der Waals forces are significant. There is a misperception that van der Waals forces are all that is holding the Gecko on as Gorb and his colleagues point out, in real world conditions capillarity has more to say than the weaker van der Waals forces.  In any case, the operative thing to imitate is the tiny spatulate hairs.  Thus far the manufactured facsimilies have been poor imitations. This system is stuck for the moment in the manimpulative phase of biomimetics research.

Perhaps the Northern and Turner article is the breakthrough we have been waiting for.  They used a three step process to make hairs that do not stick to one another.  Step one was to carve tiny platforms sitting on pillars from silicon. This is done through a fairly conventional photoresist and etching process that leaves a platform of silicon that resists etching sitting high above a narrow pillar that has been undercut and whittled away from the platform by the etchant.  The next step uses a highly oxidative environment to grow ‘organorods’ on each platform.  These polymer extesions to the platform provide the low stiffness needed for contour following.  The final step is a really smart innovation. A persistently difficult problem has been making the dry adhesive stay sticky.  Since teh manufactured hairs stick to everything they stick to dirt and each other.  The gecko and fly solution is a comination of interference adn superhydrophobicity.  The Santa Barbara group went with superhydrophobicity and changed the chemistry of the ‘organorods’ inducing a change to a flourocarbon surface.  This prevented both clumping and a good deal of dirt adhesion. 

There is still a long way to commercialization, but this may be a method for getting smaller scale adhesive devices fabricated.

PDF of Article