National Academies Keck Futures Human Healthspan Conference - Applications due June 7, 2007

 

The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative is accepting applications from active researchers to participate in The Future of Human Healthspan: Demography, Evolution, Medicine, and Bioengineering conference that will be held Nov. 14-16, 2007, in Irvine, California.  Each year the Futures Initiative hosts a conference to bring together the nation's best and brightest researchers from academia, industry, and government laboratories to ask questions about -- and to discover interdisciplinary connections between -- important areas of cutting-edge research.  Approximately 100 researchers in the United States will be invited to attend the conference, representing disciplines in science, engineering, medicine, and social science.  Applications must be submitted by June 7, and can be completed online at www.keckfutures.org/healthspan.  Invitations to attend the conference will be sent by July 15.  The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative will pay all travel expenses, including lodging and meals, for invited attendees.  Funded by a $40 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation in 2003, the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative is a 15-year effort to enhance communication among researchers, funding organizations, universities, and the public – with the objective of stimulating interdisciplinary research at the most exciting frontiers.

nanoTX'07 Scheduled for October 3-4 in Dallas

 

The nanoTX'07 International Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Expo (www.nanotx.biz) will be held at the Dallas Convention Center on October 3-4, 2007 in Dallas, Texas.

The Technical Focus areas for the conference will include biomedical, carbon nanotubes, MEMS/NEMS, nanoelectronics and nanomaterials. The Business Focus areas will include carbon nanotubes & materials based businesses, electronics industry needs, energy needs and latter stage startups.

Last September, nanoTX'06 drew approximately 4000 attendees from the US and 24 foreign countries.  Nearly 40% of the attendees were decision makers; an additional 10% were CEOs.  The conference included Chairman Emeritus Ross Perot, Sr; Texas Instruments CEO Richard K. Templeton, Texas Governor Rick Perry, International Business Strategies CEO Dr. Handel Jones, Japan's International Center for Materials Research Chairman Dr. Tadashi Sasaki and 151 more distinguished executive level speakers.  The Nobel Laureate Legends Reception was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Richard Smalley and Dr. Jack Kilby.

$300 Million Lures Sematech to the Region

 

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders revealed that Sematech has agreed to locate a key part of its operation in Albany, as long as the state comes up with a $300 million incentive package.  As a result, the governor and top lawmakers committed the funds in a capital budget bill for International Sematech. The company would establish its international headquarters in Albany, adding about 450 high-paying research and development jobs here to an existing work force of 250.  (The national headquarters will remain in Austin, TX.)

These jobs historically would have been in Texas.  This is quite a coup fro New York and follows their recruiting Sematech to open a research facility in 2003.  International Sematech is agreeing to operate in New York for at least seven years.

State officials expect it will take at least two to three years for International Sematech to fully establish in Albany.

New York will put up $300 million for assets of the new operation, such as equipment and tools, and the state will own those investments, Kaloyeros said. It will also hold rights to intellectual property.  The company will invest a matching $300 million -- half cash and half in-kind contributions such as equipment -- in its new headquarters. That includes $5 million to each of five universities for joint research.

Austin won a bid for Sematech two decades ago against other regions and cities, including Albany. Getting the company here came after several years of work, according to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was highly involved in the deal.

The governor, in a meeting with the Legislature's top four leaders, revealed funding for Sematech is one of his top priorities of the remaining weeks of the legislative session.  The leaders agreed to commit the money for the high-tech project. But Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said he wants more than the Sematech funds in a capital projects package.  He called the consortium's funding "critically important" but emphasized that there are other deals he's working on to create jobs. Legislative officials say Bruno will be looking for a total capital package of about $600 million, including the Sematech funds.  Bruno, for example, said $8.5 million is needed for the planned Advanced Micro Devices site at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta, a proposed massive computer chip factory project that the state has agreed to assist with $1.2 billion in state aid and tax breaks if the company decides to build.  Calling the AMD project the biggest ever in New York, Bruno said he is still negotiating for capital for AMD's needs as well as another big project he may announce soon in the Albany area.

Already, Silver said, Sematech employs 250 in Albany as a result of a facility the group opened in 2003 at the University at Albany campus.   "And factories spring up around it to create more jobs where the research is taking place," Silver said.   "It's phenomenal, they're abandoning Austin to come to Albany," said Assembly Majority Leader Ronald Canestrari, D-Cohoes. "Any time we get a reverse migration from the South to the North in terms of jobs, it's a real good day."

Bruno said the region has become a global leader, but it is important to deliver the jobs associated with the news releases.

"That will mean a lot of jobs and what it also means is a lot of businesses follow the Sematech," Bruno said. He said 120,000 people followed jobs associated with Sematech in Austin. "It's huge."

Assemblyman John McEneny, D-Albany, said the deal to bring Sematech sends a message. "The significance of leaving Austin, which was looked at as the great mecca of computer chip dreams, for Albany is an extraordinary coup." He said he doubts Texas will be able to counterbid.  Assemblyman Tim Gordon, I-Bethlehem, said he envisions growth throughout the state because 500 companies statewide are tied into Sematech's work. Sematech's arrival would create and retain 4,550 high-tech jobs averaging $81,000 a year, he said.

 

Source:  Albany TImes Union

Probe to Detect Spread of Breast Cancer Co-Developed by UH Scientist

 

High-temperature superconductors hold the key to a handheld tool for surgeons that promises to be more accurate, cost-effective and safer than existing methods for staging and treating various cancers, including breast cancer. 

Audrius Brazdeikis, research assistant professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston, and Quentin Pankhurst, a professor of physics from the University College of London (UCL), have developed a novel detection procedure combining nanotechnology and advanced magnetic sensing based on high-temperature superconductors.  Their innovation will enable surgeons to more effectively locate the sentinel lymph node – the first lymph node to which a tumor's metastasizing cancer cells will drain. 

The researchers produced an ultra sensitive magnetic probe to detect minuscule magnetic fields in the body.  The probe is a supersensitive magnetometer – an instrument used to track the presence of clinically introduced magnetic nanoparticles.  During breast cancer surgery, a surgeon will inject a magnetic nanoparticle dye, already approved as an imaging contrast agent by the Food and Drug Administration, into the tumor or into tissues surrounding the tumor. 

Receiving a $250,000 grant from the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry under the UK-Texas Bioscience Collaboration Initiative, Brazdeikis and Pankhurst were required to show “proof of concept” by building a device and showing it worked.  An ethics committee in the UK since has approved the detection procedure for a clinical trial of women undergoing breast cancer surgery at University College Hospital, London. 

Dr. Michael Douek, a London surgeon who specializes in breast surgery and is a senior lecturer at UCL, is overseeing the trial and used the probe for the first time in surgery in December.  Douek, who visited Houston recently in preparation for the testing, said that the ethics committee gave the hospital permission to use the probe in 10 surgeries and that after a review of those procedures, the number could increase to 100.  “We expect to start new clinical trials in Japan and Europe before the end of 2007,” Brazdeikis said.  “Our technology will be extensively validated by different surgeons in various countries.” 

Brazdeikis, who heads the Biomedical Imaging Group at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH (TcSUH), said a goal of the grant was to commercialize biomedical technology developed at universities through collaborative research.  He and Pankhurst, deputy director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology, have formed a medical devices company – Endomagnetics Inc. – to bring their technology to the marketplace and patented the probe. 

“The company plans to roll out the production of the technology in 2008,” Brazdeikis said.  “We hope that in the next two to three years practice assisted with our new probe will become more widely adopted by surgeons.” 

Endomagnetics also already has garnered recognition from such key world figures as England 's Prince Andrew, his country's special representative for international trade and investment, who highlighted new technology developed by the nanotechnology industry at the Nano-TX '06 conference in Dallas.  He cited the UH-UCL collaboration and Endomagnetics' as an “exciting example of the early stages of this kind of progress.” 

“The partnership has resulted in a technology used to locate lymph nodes for the staging and treatment of various forms of cancer, including breast cancers and melanomas, and some of the more disfiguring and demoralizing forms of cancer,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. 

“Although the technology has potential for use in the staging and treatment of other cancers, including lung and prostate cancer, the instrument needs to be customized for the type of surgery,” said Douek, who has advised the researchers from the beginning of the probe's development.  “We went through a whole series of different probes during the course of a year.  I was interested in being part of the project because of my interest in magnetic resonance imaging.  This is an extension of that technology.” 

A surgeon holds the probe, which incorporates two sets of coils connected to a sensor.  One set of coils magnetizes the magnetic particles, and the second detects the magnetic response from those particles.  The sensor, known as an HTS SQUID (or high-temperature superconducting quantum interference device) is located in a cryogenic vessel on a cart and is submerged in liquid nitrogen that cools the sensor to 77 K, equivalent to -320.5 F.  The system uses custom-built electronics and software on a laptop computer to give the surgeon visual and audio feedback while tracking the magnetic nanoparticles in the body. 

“When breast cancer is diagnosed, and a tumor has been located, a critically important issue is whether the cancer has spread to other parts of the body – a process that occurs via the transport of metastatic cancer cells through the lymphatic system,” Brazdeikis said.  “The surgeon looks for lymph nodes close to the cancer.  They are not easy to find.  The probe is a tool for the surgeon to use during the surgery to locate the sentinel lymph node.” 

Existing practice calls for a breast cancer patient to receive two preoperative injections – a radioactive isotope and a blue dye – eight to 12 hours before surgery, frequently requiring hospitalization the night before the operation.  Later, in the operating room, the surgeon uses a handheld gamma probe, aided by the visual observation of the dye, to locate the lymph node with the highest radioactivity. 

“Surgeons have a very small window of opportunity to locate the lymphatic nodes that the cancer drains into,” Brazdeikis said.  “Our technology offers unprecedented quality and value of care benefits to patients, doctors and hospital administrators over existing procedures.” 

The UH-UCL technology allows a surgeon to administer one injection – the magnetic dye that takes only 10 to 15 minutes to work – and eliminates the need for a nuclear medicine practitioner to inject the radioactive material.  A patient thus may not have to be hospitalized while waiting, and the technology eliminates unnecessary patient and surgeon exposure to radioactivity. 

“We introduce a paradigm-shifting new technology for the staging and treatment of breast and other forms of cancer,” Brazdeikis said.  “It will be very appealing for surgeons to take this technology into their practice.”

University of Texas Team Wins Nano Product Competition

Oak Ridge National Lab held a Nano Idea to Product competition as part of Nano Nexus 2007.  Fifteen teams of students presented business proposals for new and exciting nano product ideas.   THe team from UT Austin won the competition and its $25,000 prize with a targeted drug delivery platform.  The drug delivery "capsule" was a biodegradable nano-sized cylinder with a lid that dissolves in the presence of specific enzymes to release the encapsulated drug.