Spyros Stamatelos with INBT director Peter Searson. Photo by Mary Spiro

Four students were honored for their research efforts at Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology’s sixth annual symposium. A poster session with more than 75 research posters from every division of the university was held in the afternoon and four posters were selected for top honors.

A poster by Yu-Ja Huang, Justin Samorajski, Rachel Kreimer, Denis Wirtz and Peter Searson won first prize, and first author Huang was awarded the $200 gift card from Best Buy. Their poster was entitleThe Influence of Electric Field and Confinement on U-87 Glioblastoma Cells.

Taking second place was Anirudha Sing, Jianan Zhan and Jennifer Elisseeff with the poster Directed Stem Cell Differentiation Using PEG-alpha CD-derived biomaterials. First author Singh claimed the $100 Best Buy card.

A $50 Best Buy card was presented to Spyros Stamatelos who was first author with Eugene Kim, Arvind Pathak and Aleksander Popel on the poster Characterization of the Heterogeneity of Tumor Vasculature using Hemodynamic Modeling and High Resolution Imaging Implications for Drug Delivery.

Honorable mention was given to Jack Andraka, a high school research intern in the lab of Anirban Maitra who worked with Venugopal Chenna. Andraka’s poster, A Novel Paper Sensor for the Detection of Pancreatic Cancer, helped him win a free book from Springer.

Jack Andraka describing his research at the INBT poster session. Photo by Mary Spiro

The event was held  at the Johns Hopkins medical campus in the Owens Auditorium on May 4 with six faculty expert speakers and approximately 400 people in attendance.

This year’s magazine features an interview with symposium keynote speaker Ralph Hruban about the state-of-the-art in early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Hruban directs the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins.

In addition, there are comprehensive features on INBT’s international research experience program as well as the institute’s support of undergraduate research. The magazine also includes a profile of one of INBT”s corporate partners, BD, an essay on the use of videos to explain science, and many other stories about INBT.

We hope you enjoy this year’s copy of Nano-Bio Magazine. It serves as a program for the symposium as well as an outlet to feature many of INBT’s programs and achievements.

You can read Nano-Bio Magazine online or download a pdf at this link.

Predicted dimensions of nano-blocks achieved by growing individual (PbS)32 baby crystals. STM images confirmed these dimensions. (Illustration courtesy Bowen Lab)

The team first determined the structure theoretically with computer modeling. They then proved their model experimentally in the laboratory by carefully depositing clusters of (PbS)32 onto a graphite surface, where the clusters could migrate together into larger nanoscale units.

“By using scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images to measure the dimensions of the resultant lead sulfide nano-blocks, we confirmed that (PbS)32 baby crystals had indeed stacked together as predicted by theory,” said Kit Bowen Jr., the E. Emmet Reid Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins. Bowen worked on the project with, Howard Fairbrother, also a professor of chemistry. Both are affiliated faculty members of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology.

Bowen explained that the baby crystal needed just 32 units of lead sulfide to “exhibit the same structural coordination properties” of the same material at macroscale. Nanoblocks this small would have photovoltaic (solar power) applications.

“Determining the size of nano and sub-nano scale assemblies of atoms or molecules at which they first take-on recognizable properties of the same substance in the macroscopic world is an important goal in nanoscience,” Bowen said.

Their research can be found in the Journal of Chemical Physics and The Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology. A Department of Energy grant funded this research.

 The Virtual Journal of Science & Technology

Bowen Lab

Johns Hopkins students helped develop a bicycle-powered grain mill in Tanzania.

UPDATE: DEADLINE EXTENDED

Engineering Missions for Graduate Student Education and Local Innovation

Applications are now being accepted for Global Engineering Innovation projects designed to give Johns Hopkins’ graduate students and select undergraduates an opportunity to investigate and tackle engineering challenges in the developing world. Undergraduate and graduate opportunities are available. Application deadline is April 26, 2012.

An information session on the Global Engineering Innovation program will be held on April 12  at 6 p.m. in  room G40 (ground floor conference room) in the New Engineering Building.

Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology has obtained funding to support three engineering mission teams composed of two to four students at a variety of international host sites. Teams will be mentored by an engineering faculty and a faculty member from the host site. Budgets, time lines and project plans will be developed by the team members with assistance by the host site faculty member.

To be eligible to apply, undergraduate and graduate students should be science or engineering majors (other majors will be considered if a fit is evident based on application material). Teams can be predefined by the students prior to applying but each team member must submit all application material. We will attempt to keep predefined teams together but the final decision will be made by the coordination committee (we will add or remove members if we feel a better team composition can be made).

To apply for this unique opportunity, send the following items to Jennifer Elisseeff at jhe@jhu.edu and copy Eileen Snyder ets@jhu.edu. The deadline for applications is now April 26, 2012.

• Your resume including any outreach experience (domestic or international) and any foreign language capability (not required)
• A brief (300 words max.) statement of your interest in Global Engineering Innovation
• The name and contact information of at least one referee, preferably your faculty research advisor (or academic advisor for undergraduate students)

After teams, mentors and challenges are defined, the team or team leader will travel to the site to further evaluate challenge and design constraints. After return to Baltimore, the teams will meet to further research the challenge and brainstorm potential solutions. The JHU School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) will be consulted so that students will be aware of the social and political atmosphere that may impact utilization and potential distribution of the engineering solutions. By the end of the first year, the students will have designed a working prototype. The teams will then travel to the Global Site with their working prototype to test solution feasibility and modify as needed. If successful, potential avenues of translation will be investigated with advisory board members with relevant experience.

If you have additional questions, please contact Jeannine Coburn at jeannine.coburn@gmail.com for more information on the application process.

The student-run mini-symposiums aim to bring together researchers from across the campus affiliated with the PS-OC and CCNE. Graduate students training in these centers, both administered by Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, work in various disciplines from physics to engineering to the basic biological sciences but with an emphasis on understanding cancer metastasis and developing methods for cancer diagnosis or therapy.

The invited speaker for the symposium is postdoctoral researcher Megan Ho of Duke University. Ho earned her PhD in mechanical engineering in the Wang lab in 2008. She is currently focused on developing microfluidic devices to investigate and control the fundamental reactions that form nanocomplexes for gene delivery. (10 a.m.)

Student apeakers, who will talk for 15 minutes, include:

• Jane Chisholm (Justin Hanes lab/Ophthalmology): Cisplatin nanocomplexes for the local treatment of small cell lung cancer (10:20 a.m.)
• Yunke Song (Jeff Wang Lab/Mechanical Engineering): Single Quantum Dot-Based Multiplexed Point Mutation Detection by Gap Ligase Chain Reaction (10:35 a.m.)
• Andrew Wong (Peter Searson Lab/Materials Science and Engineering): Intravisation into an artificial blood vessel (10:50 a.m.)
• Brian Keeley: (Jeff Wang Lab/Mechanical Engineering): Overcoming detection limitations of DNA methylation in plasma and serum of cancer patients through utilization of nanotechnology. (11:05 a.m.)
• Sebastian Barretto (Sharon Gerecht Lab/Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering): Development of Hydrogel Microfibers to Study Angiogenesis (11:20 a.m.)

Johns Hopkins Physical Sciences-Oncology Center

Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence

Sageeta Bhatia

Nanotechnology, regenerative medicine and cancer will be the topic of a special biomedical engineering seminar on March 6 at 3 p.m. in the Darner Conference Room, Ross Building, Room G007 at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Speaker Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD, director, of the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology will present “It’s a small world: Micro/Nanotechnology in Regenerative Medicine and Cancer. ” She will discuss the role of micro and nanotechnology for mimicking, monitoring and perturbing the tissue microenvironment.

“I will present our work on reconstructing normal liver microenvironments using microtechnology, biomaterials and induced pluripotent stem cells as well as our work on normalizing diseased cancer microenvironments using both inorganic and organic nano materials,” Bhatia noted in an announcement.  Bhatia is a professor of Health Sciences and Technology and professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

The talk is hosted by associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and affiliated faculty member of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology Hai-Quan Mao. The event is free and open to the Johns Hopkins Community. Refreshments will be served.

Margarita Herrera-Alonso

Margarita Herrera-Alonso, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Herrera’s CAREER funding will support her goal of better understanding the structure and property relationships of new polymers inspired by nature.

Her research will enable these building blocks to be used in the context of other bio-inspired materials applications, such as drug carrier design. The CAREER Award recognizes the highest levels of excellence and promise in early-career scholars and teachers.

Herrera joined the Johns Hopkins University faculty in early 2010. She is an affiliated faculty member of Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology. She earned her PhD in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Find out more about the projects the Herrera Group is working on at this website.

The workshop will cover an incredible breadth of material of interest and value to physicians, scientists (including postdoctoral fellows and graduate students) and scientific laboratory professionals interested in using molecular imaging for in vivo biomedical applications. Individuals with experience in small animal imaging as well as beginners are welcome. Participants learn the fundamentals of various small animal imaging modalities. A limited number of participants will also have the opportunity to register to attend a half-day, hands on workshop held on the afternoon of the second day, March 21. Registration for this unique opportunity is on first-come first-served, so don’t wait to register.

Speakers will address imaging modalities including MRI and MRS, PET, SPECT, optical imaging (bioluminescence & fluorescence imaging/tomography), ultrasound, x-ray CT, photoacoustic imaging and multimodality imaging. Speakers will also examine instrumentation, acquisition and reconstruction, MR/SPECT/PET imaging probes, targets and applications, small animal handling, techniques for imaging infectious disease models and data analysis.

More information about the workshop, including a full agenda of topics, registration and details about transportation and lodging can be found at the workshop website. www.snm.org/pci2012.

Kannan Rangaramanujan

Chronic inflammation plays a role in neurodegenerative diseases, such as cerebral palsy. Branched, nanoscale polymer structures called dendrimers, when combined with drugs, could deliver therapies to quell inflammation, leading to functional improvements in neurodegenerative diseases. Via dendrimers, drugs could even be transported across the restrictive blood-brain barrier.

Johns Hopkins University Professor Kannan Rangaramanujan will present “Dendrimer-based nanotherapeutics for the treatment of neuroinflammation” on Monday, January 30 at 1:30 p.m. in the Talbot Library (Traylor 709) at the Johns Hopkins University medical campus. His presentation will be broadcast simultaneously to the Homewood campus in the Rome Room (Clark 110), as well as live webcast.

Read an abstract of Rangarmanujan’s talk.

Professor Rangaramanujan is a faculty member in the Center for Nanomedicine in the Department of Ophthalmology/Wilmer Eye Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He comes to Hopkins from Wayne State University in Detroit, where he was in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.

This talk is part of the Biomedical Engineering Seminar Series. Future seminar topics may be found on the BME seminar calendar.

Abstract submission is now open and the deadline is February 7, 2012. Up-to-date information on the meeting can be found at the website: www.colloids2012.org.

For further details about this meeting please contact the symposium co-organizers Mike Bevan (mabevan@jhu.edu) and Joelle Frechette (jfrechette@jhu.edu). Bevan and Frechette are affiliated faculty members of Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology and members of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Download the symposium flyer here.