Nanomedicine for Treating Various Diseases
INSTRUCTOR:Prof. Thomas Webster, Brown University
DATES: August 13-17, 2007 [5 Day Course]
LOCATION: San Francisco, CA
This course will cover fundamentals in nanotechnology applied to biology. Specifically, nanomaterials design, synthesis, and application to treate various diseases will be discussed. Diseases include those involved in bone, cartilage, vascular, cardiovascular, neurological, and bladder.
TUITION: US$2500.00
REGISTRATION: Closes July 11, 2007 or when full.
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COURSE DETAILS: Historically, synthetic materials have not served as sufficient implants. For example, the current average lifetime of an orthopedic implant, such as hip, knee, ankle, etc., is only 15 years. Similarly, for the vascular community, small diameter vascular grafts are only functional 25% of time past 5 years of use. The same limited lifetimes for a number of failing organs could be stated for cartilage, bladder, and the peripheral and central nervous systems. Clearly, conventional materials, or those materials with constituent dimensions greater than 1 micron have not invoked proper cellular responses to regenerate tissue that allows for these devices to be successful for long periods of times.
In contrast, due to their ability to mimic the dimensions of constituent components of natural tissues, like proteins, nanophase materials may be an exciting successful alternative. Nanophase materials are defined as materials with constituent dimension less than 100 nm in at least one direction. Nanomaterials have been the central focus of nanomedicine. Nanophase materials have revolutionized many traditional engineering fields such as those involving catalysis, electronics, optics, magnetics, etc.
To date, there has also been the emergence of data that nanophase materials may be optimal materials for numerous implant applications. This is not only due to their ability to simulate dimensions of proteins that comprise tissues, but also because of their higher reactivity for interactions of proteins that control cell adhesion and, thus, the ability to regenerate tissues.
The first objective of this course is to define current problems with implants. You will be familiar with issues related to implant failure particular for orthopedic, dental, cartilage, vascular, bladder, and the nervous systems. The second objective is to understand how cells interact with implanted materials to generate a biological response. We will describe how proteins interact with materials to control cell function leading to either a desirable or undesirable biological response to an implanted material. The third objective is to understand how nanophase materials could be used as better implants. What are their promising properties and what experimental evidence exists? We will sort through the experimental data and separate promise from "hype". The discussion will make you be able to indicate what are the promising properties of nanophase materials and how to make them to control initial protein interactions leading to successful regeneration of tissue.
The last objective is to understand what further information will be needed to elucidate if nanophase materials will make better biomaterials for numerous organ systems. While there is no golden standard chemistry for various implant applications, this course will discuss the possibility of a standard topography that may be useful to regenerate tissues for a wide range of materials including ceramics, metals, and polymers.