Improving drug delivery
Biomedical engineers Mark Saltzman and Michael Levene are working on new imaging techniques that "see" the movement of molecules in the brains of living animals, enabling them to track how drugs move to their target areas under different conditions. This study, funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, will be the first to correlate molecular movement within the local brain architecture. "Our novel deep-brain techniques will monitor real-time cellular events that regulate localized drug movement -- like binding and uptake of drugs into cells," said Saltzman, the Goizueta Foundation Professor and chair of biomedical engineering. "We anticipate that our results will provide the basis for the design of new approaches for drug delivery in patients with Parkinson's disease."
Tarek Fahmy, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Joseph Craft, professor of medicine and immunobiology and chief of rheumatology, are working together on developing a nanoparticle therapy that targets pathogenic immune cells in patients with lupus. The biodegradable nanoparticles, which are safe for use in humans, will be loaded with the drug mycophenolic acid and blockading agents that target renegade immune system cells that malfunction and attack different parts of the body. "We have promising preliminary data showing that this targeted combination delivery of drugs to T cells is a more effective and potent form of specific therapy than use of a free drug," said Fahmy. A three-year $300,000 award from the Lupus Research Institute is supporting this work.
The color of bird feathers
Some of the most stunning colors in nature are not created by pigments, but are instead the result of light scattering by nanoscale structures. The vivid blues observed in the feathers of bluebirds and blue jays are one such example; under an electron microscope, these structures look like sponges with air bubbles. Now an interdisciplinary team of Yale engineers, physicists, and evolutionary biologists has taken a step toward uncovering how these structures form, and has found that the color-producing structures in feathers appear to self-assemble in much the same manner as materials undergoing phase separation. Bubbles of water form in a protein-rich soup inside the living cell and are replaced with air as the feather grows, creating a structure similar to that of beer foam or a sponge.
This research has important implications for the role color plays in birds' plumage, as the color produced depends entirely on the precise size and shape of these nanostructures. But Eric Dufresne ’96, lead author of the paper, is also interested in the potential technological applications of the finding. "We have found that nature elegantly self-assembles intricate optical structures in bird feathers. We are now mimicking this approach to make a new generation of optical materials in the lab," said Dufresne, the John J. Lee Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Physics. The research appeared online in the journal Soft Matter.
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