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12-04 :: April/May 2012
nanotimes News in Brief
additives. Their aim: to make water more viscous by adding biopolymers, so it lubricates better. For the idea to become a marketable product, other partners were brought on board: the Institute for Machine Tool Engineering and Production Tech- nology at the University of Braunschweig, and Carl Bechem GmbH – a lubricant manufacturer from Hagen, Germany. The basic fluid made by the IVV, the viscous water, was improved by adding water- soluble additives so it could be used as an anti-cor- rosion agent, for example. That‘s how it meets the requirements during processing: withstanding high temperatures and shearing stresses.
http://www.ivv.fraunhofer.de/ http://www.bechem.de/en/home-16.html
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cell types. If CSCs are not eradicated, they can re- populate the tumor and lead to cancer recurrence. Hence, it is important for researchers to understand the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs against CSCs. However, since CSCs are so scarce – they make up approximately 1% of cancer cells – their study has been hampered by conventional drug screening methods, which require large sample volumes and are slow and expensive.
Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN, Singapore) have develo- ped a miniaturized biochip for investigating the effect of drugs on cancer stem cells (CSCs). This new technology could boost the development of more effective cancer drugs. A team of researchers led by IBN Executive Director, Professor Jackie Y. Ying, has developed a miniaturized biological assay called the Droplet Array to perform cheaper, faster and more convenient drug screening using limited samples.
In a tumor, CSCs form a small and distinct class of cancer cells that are more resistant to chemothe- rapy. Similar to stem cells found in human tissues, CSCs can produce and differentiate into different
The Droplet Array technology is currently being commercialized by IBN’s first spinoff company, Curiox Biosystems Pte Ltd, as DropArray™.
Yong Yeow Lee, Karthikeyan Narayanan, Shu Jun Gao, Jackie Y. Ying: Elucidating Drug Resistance Properties in Scarce Cancer Stem Cells Using Droplet Microarray, In: Nano Today, Volume 7, Issue 1, February 2012, Pages 29-34, DOI:10.1016/j.nantod.2012.01.003: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nantod.2012.01.003