AIST devises method to mass produce organic nanotubes
Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, known as AIST, has developed a method to mass-produce organic nanotubes that can be used as "molecular containers" to deliver drug particles to specific parts of the body.
Under the conventional synthesis method, more than 20 kiloliters of water is needed to obtain one kilogram of the nanotubes. The synthesized nanotubes also need to be vacuum dried for several days so that they can be used to hold functional substances, making commercial production difficult.
Researchers led by Toshimi Shimizu, head of AIST's Nanoarchtectonics Research Center, devised a method to synthesize more than one kilogram of organic nanotubes by using about 10 liters of ethanol. The use of ethanol, instead of large quantities of water, also enabled them to shorten the vacuum-drying period to several hours, they said.
Organic nanotubes, invented in the early 1980s, consist of several million molecules that have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts. Such hydrophilic-hydrophobic molecules align to form a nanotube when placed in a liquid under certain conditions.
Organic nanotubes have an inner diameter of between 10 nanometers and 200 nanometers, and an external diameter of between 40 nanometers and 1,000 nanometers. They are several micrometers to several hundred micrometers long. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter, and one micrometer is one-millionth of a meter.
Their size enables them to hold substances -- such as protein molecules, DNA strains, metallic nanoparticles and viruses -- that are too large to fit into a ring-shaped molecule called a cyclodextrin, which is widely used in such products as deodorants.
The size of organic nanotubes and their property of being able to gradually release their contents make them ideal containers for the delivery of drugs, such as anticancer agents, to targeted parts of the body. Such a drug administration method can significantly reduce side effects, compared with oral administration or injection, which make the drug to circulate around the entire body.
AIST will report the mass production method at Orgatechno 2006, a convention on organic materials, to be held in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, for three days from Tuesday, and look for companies willing to commercialize the technology.
The institute named the newly formed products, having an inner diameter of 40 nanometers to 200 nanometers and an external diameter of 70 nanometers to 500 nanometers as Organic Nanotube AIST and applied to the government for trademark registration. (Jiji Press)
July 22, 2006
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