The Biotechnology Research Grant to Jed Macosko, project director and assistant professor of physics at WFU, supports a "Lab-on-Bead" process to screen millions of chemicals simultaneously using plastic beads so small that 1,000 of them would fit across a human hair. Each bead carries a separate chemical, which can be identified later if it displays the properties needed to treat cancer cells. One batch of the nano-scale beads can replace the work of thousands of conventional, repetitive laboratory tests.
"This process allows the beads to do the work for you," said Macosko. "By working at this scale, we will be able to screen more than a billion possible drug candidates per day as opposed to the current limit of hundreds of thousands per day."
Other members of the research team at WFU include co-principal investigator Martin Guthold, an associate professor of physics, and Keith Bonin, department chair and professor of physics.
The research grant is one of five given to WFU scientists by the Biotechnology Center in the Center's 2007-2008 funding cycle, resulting in $372,221 to the Winston-Salem campus.
Macosko said his team, along with collaborators at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, is developing a device that will automate the Lab-on-Bead process and permit parallel processing to attain faster screening results. The Wake Forest researchers are also working with biotechnologists at Harvard University and at Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, who are providing the chemicals being screened for drug candidates.
WFU's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials, which maintains ongoing research programs in the areas of health and medicine, energy technologies and synthesis of nanomaterials, will facilitate some elements of Lab-on-Bead development.
WFU is in a consortium of Piedmont Triad institutions awarded a $100,000 planning grant from the Biotechnology Center last November to establish the state's first Center of Innovation (COI), focusing on the emerging field of nanobiotechnology.
The consortium, which also includes the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University, is using the funding to develop a business plan leading to an application to the Biotechnology Center for a four-year Phase 2 grant request.
The ultimate goal is to help establish the Piedmont Triad as a research hub for products and processes using nano particles – measured by the nanometer, or billionth of a meter. A meter is 3.28 feet. A typical human hair is about 80,000 nanometers across.
Nano-scale particles are being used in an increasing array of applications because scientists are finding they possess unique, often valuable characteristics that are not seen in larger, more complex forms of matter.
Read the Wake Forest University news release