School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
November/December 2014

Immune cells get cancer-fighting boost from nanomaterials

The newest cancer-fighting tool isn’t a new drug; it’s your own immune cells. When incubated outside the body on top of carbon nanotube-polymer composites, those cells can multiply by a factor of 200 within two weeks, at which point they can be injected back into your blood to boost your immune response or fight cancer. New research from associate professor of biomedical engineering Tarek Fahmy utilizes the topography of the nanotubes to enhance interactions between cells and long-term cultures, providing a fast and effective stimulation of the cytotoxic T cells that are important to immune system functions and to eradicating cancer. Meanwhile, the polymer nanoparticles that are chemically bound to the nanotubes encourage T cell growth and proliferation. In order to mimic the body’s methods for stimulating cytotoxic T cell proliferation, the scientists also seeded the nanotube surface with molecules that signaled which of the patient’s cells were foreign or toxic and should be attacked. “In repressing the body’s immune response, tumors are like a castle with a moat around it,” says Fahmy. “Our method recruits significantly more cells to the battle and arms them to become superkillers.”

Engineering “hot” solar cells

Although solar panels efficiently convert part of the solar spectrum directly into electricity, they become significantly less efficient as they get hotter—an inevitable side effect of absorbing sunlight. But new solar cells created by associate professor of electrical engineering Minjoo Larry Lee will operate efficiently at extreme temperatures above 750 degrees Fahrenheit—as hot as the inside of a brick oven. Sponsored by a $2,540,000 grant from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, Lee’s photovoltaic panels do not disperse the heat or cool the panel in any way, and instead uniquely embrace the heat: the panels integrate with a solar thermal collector that absorbs the unused portion of the light spectrum as heat. The resulting heat energy is transferred to high-temperature fluids that can power a steam turbine or be stored for use when the sun is not shining or whenever electrical demand rises.