Nanomaterials-Nanomedicine Workshop

15.00 Matteo Pasquali
(Rice University, Houston, TX)

Carbon Nanotubes as a solution to the materials-energy nexus?

16.30 Davide Bedognetti

(Sidra Medical and Research Center in Doha, Qatar)

Systems biology approaches to identify determinants of cancer immune responsiveness

Abstracts:

Carbon Nanotubes as a solution to the materials-energy nexus?

After a slow start in the first half of the XX century, the world market for plastics has now surpassed the 300 MTon/yr mark.  Plastics have replaced naturally occurring materials in a multitude of applications.  They have done so while adding value to their fossil hydrocarbon precursors, while also fixing over 8 BTon of carbon and preventing 30 BTon of CO2 emissions.  Yet, two areas have remained essentially off-limit for plastics: high conductivity materials (because of plastics’ inherent inertness) and high-strength materials, where penetration has been limited because of the high cost of high-strength polymeric materials such as carbon fibers and aramids, whose world market is still below 0.1 MTon/yr (compared to 1,600 MTon/yr for steel).
In my talk, I will introduce the view that carbon nanotubes (CNT) are essentially polymers naturally endowed with high strength, environmental stability, and electrical and thermal conductivity.  Like polymers, CNTs are synthesized from simple hydrocarbons; they also behave like polymers in solutions, forming liquid crystals as a function of their concentration and aspect ratio.  I will review progress in understanding and controlling CNT solutions, developing manufacturing routes, and will present the state-of-the-art in CNT macroscopic materials properties and associated application advantages in various areas, such as lightweight conductors for aerospace and automotive applications as well as wearable and implantable sensors.
I will briefly discuss how CNTs can be the vehicle for converting methane into clean hydrogen and materials for metal replacement; this path would provide a solution for the materials-energy nexus.

Systems biology approaches to identify determinants of cancer immune responsiveness

Major advances in the field of cancer immunotherapy have convincingly demonstrated that harnessing the immune system to reject established tumors represents a highly effective therapeutic strategy. The enthusiasm for cancer immunotherapy has been reinvigorated by the advent of checkpoint inhibitors, such as CTLA-4 and PD-1 blockades. While this approach has led to dramatic therapeutic improvements in a subset of patients across several cancer types, the proportion of unresponsive patients (60-80%) still exceeds those that do respond. Therefore, the crucial challenge at this moment is to extend the benefit of immunotherapeutic treatments to a wider range of patients. This can be achieved from one side by identifying patients more responsive to immune manipulations and from the other side by understanding the molecular bases of immune resistance, which in turn my lead to the identification of actionable targets.
In my talk, I will discuss how we can dissect tumor-host interactions using integrated analyses to identify genetic determinants of immune responsiveness. I will also show how certain nanomaterials might trigger molecular pathways implicated in the immune-mediated tumor rejection.
Finally, I will describe recent efforts on the implementation of transcriptomic analyses to monitor the effect of immune manipulations in humans.