June 27, 2007 — Agilent Technologies Inc. has installed a new reactive magnetron thin-film optical coating system from Leybold Optics GmbH that will be used to coat components requiring extremely precise spectral and polarization control. The high-precision HELIOS System is the first to be installed in North America, and Agilent says it will help the company better serve customers in nanotechnology measurement and other markets, including aerospace/defense, vision systems, homeland security, and biotech instrumentation.

“The capabilities of the new HELIOS coating system will allow us to meet the ever-increasing demands of our customers to deliver optical components and assemblies with higher accuracy and tighter tolerances while offering reduced cost and improved repeatability,” said Vince Barich, Agilent Precision Optics operations manager. “It also complements our current capabilities in low-stress, high-performance coatings.”

Agilent says it can help deliver optical components and assemblies with higher accuracy and tighter tolerances — at reduced cost. (Photo: Agilent)

The HELIOS’s ‘reactive magnetron’ sputtering process is said to produce high-precision color, UV and IR filters, and beam splitter coatings with excellent quality. The system promises high-density coatings that are also less prone to moisture absorption, temperature shifting, and will work in air as well as in vacuum. Agilent expects this new capability to offer faster coating development and time-to-market for its customers.

June 26, 2007 — Hybrid Plastics Inc., Hattiesburg, Miss, has received a $5,600,000 facilitization contract, under Title III of the Defense Production Act, to ensure adequate production capability for its award-winning POSS nanostructured chemicals for defense and commercial applications.

According to the company, POSS [Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes] nanomaterials represent a revolutionary platform technology with a wide spectrum of applications. The U.S. Air Force recently stated that “POSS polymers may soon replace Kapton for all military and commercial space applications.”
Senators Cochran and Lott worked to get the support of Title III of the Defense Production Act for this initiative. This Title III funding will significantly increase Hybrid’s defense production capacity. Senator Cochran commented, “In 2004, Hybrid Plastics chose to move from California to South Mississippi to take advantage of the cutting-edge polymer research that is taking place in our state. This funding will enable Hybrid Plastics to continue its efforts to enhance our defense capabilities.”

POSS is based on silicon-derived building blocks that provide nanometer-scale control to improve the thermal and mechanical properties of traditional polymers while promising easy incorporation using existing manufacturing protocols. These compounds have an average diameter of 1.5 nanometers. POSS nanomaterials can be used both as direct replacements for hydrocarbon based materials or as low-density performance additives to traditional plastics. They release no VOCs, and are biocompatible, recyclable, non-flammable, and competitively priced with traditional polymer feedstocks. The company says POSS materials can be readily incorporated into virtually any existing polymer system through blending, grafting or copolymerization.

June 26, 2007 — Nantero Inc., known for its use of carbon nanotubes to develop next-generation semiconductor devices, has made a new deal to license rights to the newly formed company Alpha Szenszor Inc. for development of biomedical sensors. Nantero CEO and cofounder Greg Schmergel told Small Times that while his company has previously made licensing arrangements for memory applications, this is the first time Nantero has licensed technology in the field of sensors. Alpha Szenszor (Szenszor is pronounced “sensor”) is developing portable, low-cost detectors for infectious diseases such as HIV, as well as other products.

Alpha Szenszor’s co-founders include Steve Lerner, an industry veteran with over 28 years of product development and industrialization experience, and Professor Charles Lieber of Harvard University, world-renowned expert in the field of nanobio sensors.

Speaking to Small Times, Schmergel said that to make NRAM (its high-density nonvolatile memory device), Nantero had to develop a suite of technologies that would enable nanotubes to “get into semiconductor fabs” — for instance, spin coating on wafers; patterning; and high-speed, high-volume processing. “We realized that if we can use these processes for memory, we can use them for other applications,” he explained.

Schmergel added that nanotubes offer several advantages for sensor applications. “With a scalable process you can make small sensors in high volumes.” The nanotubes are functionalized in a way that resistance is changed — or some other signal is produced — when they come into contact with the agent or substance of interest. The nanotubes provide excellent sensitivity, and their small size enables the production of tiny arrays for detection of multiple phenomena.

In the case of Alpha Szenszor — with its promise to diagnose HIV, cancer, and heart disease; distinguish between cold and flu; etc., all this adds up to a major convenience for the consumer. According to Schmergel, Alpha Szenszor intends to have products commercially available within a couple of years.

Alpha Szenszor CEO Steve Lerner said, “. . . we are poised to bring revolutionary products to market in a very short time frame. We will enable portable disease testing that would be available through local pharmacies and allow anyone to test themselves with total privacy and at a low cost. When placed in the hands of the primary care physicians, we envision our technology becoming part of every patient check-up.”

Professor Charles Lieber, Co-Founder of Alpha Szenszor, added, “The Nantero technology provides a highly industrialized platform through which my years of work may be applied to facilitate this revolution in global health care.”

Nantero’s Schmergel, noted “…we have to pick carefully the right partners who have the capability to bring products to market that will add substantial value to their customers. We believe Alpha Szenszor is such a partner.”

Nantero’s intellectual property includes over 100 patent applications, of which over 25 have already been granted.

June 25, 2007 — Arrowhead Research Corp. has changed the name of its new wholly-owned nanobioscience subsidiary from C Sixty Acquisition Corp. to Tego BioSciences Corp. The subsidiary acquired the assets of C Sixty, Inc. in March 2007, and is now focused on the development of new protective products based on the anti-oxidant properties of modified buckministerfullerenes (fullerenes or buckyballs). Tego is initially developing products to reduce oxidative damage caused by sun exposure, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy and mitigate complications associated with organ transplantation and tissue engineering.

“Tego is set to commence preclinical animal studies in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute this summer,” said R. Bruce Stewart, Chairman of Arrowhead. “Tego is in the process of assembling a business and technical team with expertise in nanoparticle-based therapeutics and skin care products.”

The preclinical studies will be performed in the NCI’s Nanotechnology Characterization Lab (NCL) to measure the ability of a Tego fullerene formulation to protect against harmful side effects of two anti-cancer drugs, cisplastin and adriamycin. The first stage of the studies will use NCL’s resources, with follow on funding from Tego, as appropriate.

June 22, 2007 — Researchers from Luna Innovations Inc. and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) say they are the first to show that carbon nanospheres (“buckyballs”) can block allergic response in human cell culture experiments and mice. The findings are described in a paper entitled “Fullerene Nanomaterials Inhibit the Allergic Response” published in the July 1 issue of the Journal of Immunology. They set the stage for the development of new potential therapies for allergies using nanomaterials.

“This discovery is exciting because it points to the possibility that these novel materials can one day lead to new therapies,” said Chris Kepley, Ph.D., principal author on the paper and assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology at the VCU School of Medicine.

“Through this joint collaboration with VCU, we demonstrated the ability to modulate the immune response with nanoscale precision,” said Dr. Robert Lenk, President of Luna Innovations’ nanoWorks Division and co-author of the paper. “Our experiments could be the beginning of an entirely new field of medicine we are calling nanoImmunology. We are excited about the potential possibilities in immunotherapeutics and other medical disorders that may be possible with these compounds.”

Luna CEO Kent Murphy said, “We are actively seeking pharmaceutical partnerships to help us accelerate the development and validation process of these new and exciting compounds.”

Allergy is the fifth leading chronic disease in the United States among all ages, and the third most common chronic disease among children under 18 years old, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. An estimated 50 million Americans (one in five) suffer from some type of allergy. There are currently various treatments to control allergies, but no known cure.