A number of African nations have decided to establish a network to build capacity on the safety of nanomaterials. The decision was taken at a workshop in Lusaka, Zambia, organised by the UN Institute for Training and Research (Unitar) and Zambia’s Environmental Management Agency (Zema), with funding from Switzerland. Georg Karlaganis, senior adviser for Unitar’s
Scientists at the INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials have found out that the protein haemoglobin influences the aggregation of individual gold nanoparticles to form clumps. James Bond can be located anywhere. He owes this fact to the nanosensors that find their way into his bloodstream by way of injection in the film "Spectre". In
The EuroScience Open Forum has announced its 2016 programme. With keynote speakers including Professor Dame Sally Davies, the UK's Chief Medical Officer, right through to Commissioner Moedas from the European Commission; and sessions on science and technology and their impact on our societies, space exploration and pushing the frontiers of our scientific knowledge to the
More and more nano materials are being used in products we use every day, but in order to ensure this proliferation can deliver the innovation society needs, we must ensure that they are safe to use. At the moment, this is both time consuming and expensive. NANOSOLUTIONS is an EU-funded project that aims to change
Bengt Fadeel of the Karolinska Institutet spoke about the possibilities of using transcriptomics — gene expression profiling — to aid in the prediction of mechanisms of toxicity. By coupling global “omics” technologies with computational approaches to determine significant perturbations of genes or pathways, one can identify the potential hazards and mechanisms of action of ENMs.
The opening keynote lecture at The Systems Biology in Nanosafety Research conference, taking place at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, brought the perspectives of a material scientist to the forum with a fascinating talk by Professor Olli Ikkala. Professor Ikkala, of the Department of Applied Physics and Centre of Excellence of Molecular Engineering of Biosynthetic
IPL recently hosted the latest NANOSOLUTIONS dissemination committee meeting, at which committee members discussed the current work of different work packages, the NANOSOLUTIONS safety Classifier and plans by IPL to increase communications activity now that results are beginning to emerge from the project’s experiments. At the core of this communication activity will be the NANOSOLUTIONS
Lang Tran The development and application of ENMs promises many benefits to both society and the global economy. However, to ensure responsible development of this emerging technology, governance must be put into place to ensure that any potential risk posed by ENMs are fully understood and controlled. The regulatory landscape is constantly evolving for all
Dario Greco One of the main goals of the NANOSOLUTIONS consortium is to create an ENM classifier - a model that can predict the effect of any given nanomaterial. This is being done through what is known as machine learning; we are essentially training a computer programme to know what is dangerous and what is
Fritz Krombach Inhalation of rigid multi-wall carbon nanotubes induces allergic asthma-like symptoms in mice The overall goal of WP8 is to identify the key physicochemical properties and surface modifications of engineered nanomaterials (ENM) that control their fate and biological and toxic effects in cells and tissues from susceptible individuals. For this goal, WP8 partners will
