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Chemical Technology • November 2015
6
Blurring the lines
between nanotech and biochemistry
N
ow. The walls are harder. Much less forgiving.
I realised the steady progression of time and
bone-damage when I leapt, achieving a horizontal
position one metre above the floor, and concluded – while
still up there – that this was not going to end well. It didn’t.
Doctors say I should, eventually, be breathing unaided once
more. Playing the cello, they apologise, is out of reach. Good
thing, I never tried it before.
But still, there must be something we can do about all
this lack of dexterity and volatility that comes with ageing.
Let’s start with all those muscle and joint injuries and
get more intimate from there.
My knees could definitely do with what Korean Scien-
tists at the Center for Nanoparticle Research, Institute for
Basic Science (IBS) have come up with. They have created
a ‘fabric’ made of ~150 nm diameter silver nanowires in
an interlocking coil, and embedded in elastic material. This
conductive fabric can be linked up to a small battery and
provides direct heating over and around the joint.
Better still, because it is light-weight, wearable, and
breathable, it can be worn while running around. This is
great news for squash players and those heading to the
Arctic to climb mountains, or something.
The question is going to be how durable such thin silver
wires can be under stress, and I imagine this goes under
the heading ‘needs work’. Silver, in my experience, has
a tendency to break rather easily. However, beyond all
the hype of nanotechnology in circuitry or providing weird
properties, this is a fairly simple implementation with direct
applications. It’s a wonder it hasn’t come sooner.
Nanowire devices have been around for a while. Think
coronary stents. But these are now being used in more
subtle ways. For example, a medical team from the Wyss
Institute at Harvard University and the New England Center
for Stroke Research at University of Massachusetts, have de-
veloped a technique to re-vascularise (ie, restore bloodflow)
to a vessel obstructed by a clot. They use an intra-arterial
stent to open a channel through the clot and then inject a
nanotherapeutic.
“What’s progressive about this approach is that the
temporary opening of a tiny hole in the clot — using a stent
device that is already commonly used clinically — results
in a local rise in mechanical forces that activate the nano-
therapeutic to deploy the clot-busting drug precisely where
it can best do its job,” says Donald Ingber, Wyss Institute
Founding Director.
And bone repair is being speeded up with 3D bioprint-
ing which mixes biocompatible gels with stem cells and
active proteins.
This is where things take an odd turn.
When we think of nanomaterials, we (I) tend to think
of things that are – in some way – manufactured. It may
be chemically, like nanotubes microprocessors, or even
machined. The active agent in such production is, though,
human.
What happens when we use actual living organisms to
manufacture novel nanomaterials and tools? Is that biotech
or nanotech? Engineering or biology?
It doesn’t necessarily matter philosophically, but there
are practical implications. Back in 1986, Eric Drexler imag-
ined a classic end-of-the-world tale in “Engines of Creation”:
“Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals,
The walls, they no longer bounce the way
they used to. When I was younger, I would
launch myself at them, flinging myself
across the court to reach the squash ball,
ricocheting off them to reach the next shot.
by Gavin Chait