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Ed. Note: The following
is a press release from Rice University.
Jan. 18, 2005 -- The Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas has selected Rice
University doctoral student Balaji Sitharaman as one of two winners of the
2004 George Kozmetsky Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in
Nanotechnology for his efforts to create a revolutionary new class of
contrast agents that could, for the first time, allow magnetic resonance
imaging of individual cells.
"Balu is one of the best graduate students I have worked with in my 30
years at Rice," said Lon Wilson, professor of chemistry and Sitharaman's
Ph.D. advisor. "He's already produced six peer-reviewed manuscripts that
have been published or accepted by first-rank journals, and it's likely
that he'll double that by the time he graduates."
More than 25 million patients in the U.S. undergo MRIs annually, and
doctors use contrast agents in almost of quarter of those procedures.
Contrast agents increase the sensitivity of the scans, making it easier
for doctors to deliver a diagnosis. The most effective and commonly used
contrast agent is the toxic metal gadolinium.
Sitharaman has created new forms of contrast agents by encasing gadolinium
inside fullerenes. Fullerenes are single molecules of carbon atoms
arranged in spherical or tube-shaped structures. By enclosing the
gadolinium inside the carbon molecules, Sitharaman has simultaneously
reduced the toxicity of the metal to near zero while boosting its
effectiveness as a contrast agent.
One of Sitharaman's creations is a buckyball encasing a single atom of
gadolinium. More recently, he has discovered a method of encasing as many
as 100 atoms of the metal inside a short length of carbon nanotube. The
resulting "gadonanotubes" are 100 times more effective as contrast agents
than the best forms in clinical use.
In future work, Sitharaman plans to use existing methods of attaching
antibodies and peptides to fullerenes to try to create a contrast agent
that will bind only with diseased cells such as cancer cells. He is
hopeful that these tissue-specific imaging agents might allow for the
first intracellular, individual cell MRIs.
"I m grateful and honored by this recognition by the Nanotech Foundation
of Texas and look forward to the benefit of our research to diagnostic
medicine," said Sitharaman. Sitharaman and University of Texas at Austin
student Aaron Saunders were named as this year's Kozmetsky Award
recipients on Jan. 12. The prestigious award includes a $5,000 prize.
The awards are the first of their kind offered to U.S. graduate students
working on nanotechnology. A Rice student has won one of the two awards in
each of the first two years they have been offered.
Competition for the awards is fierce. For example, the scientific review
board that judged this year's applicants used a 400-point scale, and the
top four finishers were separated by only 42 points
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