Media Coverage

Media coverage of CBNS provides the public with important insights into the diverse range of research being undertaken at the Centre. It highlights the Centre’s contribution in understanding the interface between nanoengineered materials and biological systems, and translating these discoveries into better methods, tools and technologies. This coverage also gives Centre members a key opportunity to contribute to public debates on science and to facilitate increased understanding of the importance of scientific progress.

2019 was a bustling year for CBNS. A number of significant papers were published which resulted in increased engagement by the media. Published papers reflect the success of the Centre and give CBNS members the opportunity to expand their network, promote their ideas within the scientific community and refine their research. Detailed on this page are four stories that garnered considerable media interest through television, major and regional newspapers.

A breakthrough for CBNS researchers Dr Ibrahim Javed and Centre Director Professor Tom Davis, both of Monash University, where combining milk protein with gold was successful in curing zebrafish of Alzheimer’s disease. Having used the milk protein-coated gold particles to cure zebrafish suffering a form of dementia, Professor Davis said the development was continuing to see if it could eventually be suited to humans. “It is almost like taking a statin where you take them every day and, if you did have these things building up in your brain or other parts of your body, they would be removed.” Working with colleagues in the US and China, CBNS scientists found a milk protein called β casein had properties almost identical to the Alzheimer’s disease-causing plaque but is non-toxic. Because they were so similarly matched, lead researcher Dr Ibrahim Javed said the drug was able to bind with the toxic plaque before it was excreted by the body. “We found that it completely restored the symptoms. The treated fish were acting exactly like the untreated control fish,” Dr Javed said. “The β casein prevented the plaque formation and then it cleaned up the brain. Zebrafish share more than 90 per cent of their genes with humans and are transparent, making them strong candidates for research into brain diseases. Published in the Herald Sun on 24 August 2019.

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Front page of the Herald Sun on the 26 June 2019 saw a piece about CBNS researchers having developed a disposable device that can warn doctors of dangerous birth complication; it hopes to save many of the 500,000 babies who die each year from pre-eclampsia. The new test cannot only diagnose pre-eclampsia within half an hour but also uncover the severity of the condition even in remote parts of the world. In recent years the breakthrough discovery of two markers in the blood of pregnant women paved the way for a hospital-based test capable of diagnose the dangerous condition in about 24 hours. CBNS and UniSA researchers have now built upon that work, developing a cheap handheld device that can quickly identify levels of the same placental growth factor makers. “With pre-eclampsia, you really want to pick it up very quickly because a 24-48-hour delay really can have quite serious consequences,” CI Professor Benjamin Thierry said. “We know the detection works, we get the response very quickly, but it is how you implement the engineering so that it can work in remote environments.

November 2019 saw the release of a Nature Nanotechnology paper from Dr Paulina Ramírez-García and Dr Nicholas Veldhuis which gained nationwide publicity including the Herald Sun and Channel Seven News (5 November 2019). Their research involved increasing the efficacy of existing pain killers. They created a nanoparticle drug carrier, a sneaky way of packing a microscopic capsule – 1,000 times thinner than a human hair – with a pain reliever that can interrupt the pain signal from within the cell. With millions of people suffering chronic pain; there was an urgent need to find more effective and safer treatments. “Every single one of the analgesics we use to treat pain has associated side effects,” Dr Veldhuis said. “New drug candidates have been identified, but they haven’t made it to the clinic. “One of the key questions we hoped to address was; is the drug getting to the right location? If it’s not, can we use nanotechnology to deliver drugs to a specific place to get a better outcome?”

Televised through Channel Seven and Channel Nine on 15 August 2019, CI Professor Clive Prestidge and his team from UniSA, including PhD student Ms Santhni Subramaniam, spoke about successfully using microscopic nanoparticles to carry antibiotics to hard-toreach infected cells. They expected the method to work just as well on urinary tract infections, bone and wound infections. “Over time, bacteria have learnt how to hide in human cells, making some diseases resistant to antibiotics. To get around this challenge we have put the antibiotic into a very, very small vehicle that enables it to go into the body and kill the invading bacteria hiding in the cells,” Professor Prestidge says. The nanoscale capsules containing the antibiotics are eaten by the infected cells, which then die at a much higher rate.