Nanostructured surface by Dr Malika Ardhaoui
UCD’s Centre for BioNano Interactions (CBNI), led by Prof Kenneth Dawson, is part of winning bid to study how nanomaterials interact with the environment and with living systems.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made the awards, worth $40M, to establish two Centres for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEIN).The centres, led by UCLA and Duke University, will study how nanomaterials interact with the environment and with living systems, and will translate this knowledge into risk assessment and mitigation strategies useful in the development of nanotechnology.
While UCLA serves as the lead campus for the UC CEIN, University College Dublin along with other institutions around the world was part of the winning bid to take part in the research. For Professor Kenneth Dawson of UCD’s Centre for BioNano Interactions, this is a very important development as it is part of the US-Ireland agreement on research. It also positions UCD as a lead institution in nanobiology in Europe.
Nanoscale materials are very small materials (a millionth of a millimetre) that behave in quite novel ways, allowing for much faster computers, new concepts in mobile phones, and radically new technologies of all types. “Researchers are studying the effects of nanoparticles on biology because they can be made to target new places in the human body, and deliver novel therapies, thus holding promise for early diagnosis and therapy of the most challenging diseases, such as cancer, neurodegeneration, and viral infection”, said Professor Dawson.
To take on the challenge of studying how nanomaterials interact with the environment and with living systems, the successful centres will work as a network, and will emphasise interdisciplinary research and education. This development has attracted increasing attention, especially since Nanotechnology is expected to become a $1 trillion industry within the next decade.
However, the human health and environmental implications of these materials are only beginning to be understood. The UCLA lead team brings together medics, toxicologists, biologists and physical chemists and focus on development of a comprehensive computational risk ranking that will allow powerful risk predictions to be made by and for the academic community, industry, the public, and regulating agencies.
In 2007 Professor Dawson received the Class I (Physical and Mathematical Sciences) award of the Cozzarelli Prize for the UCD led paper entitled “Understanding the nanoparticle-protein corona using methods to quantify exchange rates and affinities of proteins for nanoparticles”. The Cozzarelli Prize acknowledges papers that reflect exceptional contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Dawson’s most recent research at the UCD Centre for BioNano Interactions has shown that nanoparticles suspended in human blood become cloaked in plasma proteins, and that the composition of the protein cloak depends not only on the surface properties of the nanoparticle, but also, surprisingly, on its size. His team proposes that regulatory officials now consider how nanoparticle size and surface properties could affect efficacy and safety in possible drug treatments, rather than simply classifying them according to the material they are made from.
