Higher Performance Protein Binding
Inanovate (www.inanovate.com) is developing nanostructured biochip substrates, according to David Arslanian, COO and cofounder and another presenter at the MIT meeting. “Our substrates are used by biopharmaceutical companies as high-performance surfaces. These materials permit deposition of capture agents (usually proteins) developed by our clients.”
Classically, protein binding chips are coated with gold or other materials in order to facilitate protein binding. The Inanovate technology uses gold nanoparticles of precise dimensions in order to provide defined binding in which the molecules are all oriented in the same direction. Thus the nanoparticles are all exactly the same size and dimensions, and all are tethered to the surface in precisely the same fashion. The result is a consistent surface assuring that the percentage of protein molecules attached to the chip will be many times greater than with conventional colloidal gold particles.
The Inanovate technology deals with a variety of problems presented by conventional attachment surfaces: (1) The surface binds the material so poorly that it is lost; (2) the target molecules attach, but are misaligned so their active areas are hidden; (3) the molecules clump together, shielding their active areas; (4) the biomolecules are oriented incorrectly, so the active area faces the surface; (5) the molecules denature and do not retain their original function.
Accordingly, only a small percentage of the biomolecules deposited onto existing biochips can be recognized by antibodies or other capture reagents. This leads to sensitivity and consistency problems, which may overwhelm existing protein biochip systems. Thus the Inanovate technology avoids spurious results that can, in the case of drugs pushed forward in development based on inaccurate information, result in hundreds of millions of dollars lost.
The Inanovate platform, designed to be compatible with existing standard hardware, provides companies with an application-specific, biochip available for drug development and testing procedures, according to Arslanian. The technology will be in the marketplace in the next year.
“At the nanoscale, physical structures take on unusual properties, and we can exploit these properties using carbon nanotubes,” says Peter Antoinette, CEO and cofounder at NanoComp Technologies (NCTI; www.nanocomptech.com).
“Electrons and photons at these dimensions are guided by quantum constraints, and the nanotube materials may behave as insulators, conductors, or transmitters,” he explained to the MIT audience.
NanoComp is one of a number of companies investigating these structures that look like chicken-wire cylinders, but with a diameter as small as DNA. The company seeks to leverage its technology for the production of long carbon nanotubes together with the ability to fabricate them into physically strong, lightweight, electro-thermally conductive yarns and felts for use as structural materials and electro-energy devices.
Carbon nanotubes possess extraordinary properties with a wealth of industrial applications. They are extremely strong (100 times stronger than steel), are lightweight (30% lighter than aluminum), display superb electrical conductivity, (comparable to copper), and exhibit thermal properties of heat transfer and retention superior to metals. However, a serious shortcoming of available competitive commercial manufacturing processes is that they generally produce only short carbon nanotubes, usually tens of microns long, with the result that the product is much like a powder.
Antoinette and his colleagues recognized that longer nanotubes mean greater strength, higher conductivity, easier handling, and greater product safety. Moreover, today’s nanotubes are also quite expensive—usually too expensive for use in volume industrial applications. This is a result of the significant amounts of impurities generated in their manufacture that are difficult and costly to remove. NCTI’s patent-pending process produces long, pure, continuous carbon nanotubes at high growth rates that require no post-growth purification, according to the company. Nanocomp is pursuing a number of applications of its long nanotubes.