Joerg Lahann, Ph.D.

It uses magnetic fields to display images at the same resolution as a squid’s color-changing skin

A flexible screen inspired, in part, by squid can store and display encrypted images like a computer—using magnetic fields rather than electronics. The research is reported in Advanced Materials by University of Michigan engineers.

“It’s one of the first times where mechanical materials use magnetic fields for system-level encryption, information processing and computing. And unlike some earlier mechanical computers, this device can wrap around your wrist,” said Joerg Lahann, the Wolfgang Pauli Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and co-corresponding author of the study… Continue reading.

A protein that crosses the blood-brain barrier carries a drug that kills tumor cells and another that activates the immune system

A new nanomedicine that crosses the blood-brain barrier, engages the immune system and kills cancer cells may offer hope for treating the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma.

With $2.38 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the medicine will soon be tested in mice at the University of Michigan.

Led by a nano-engineer and neuro-oncology researchers at U-M, the study is the first to test the two drugs together, packaged so that they can be delivered through the bloodstream rather than a hole in the skull. It builds on previous success eliminating cancer in seven out of eight mice by packaging just the immune drug in the protein that crosses the blood-brain barrier so that it could be delivered intravenously. The five-year survival rate for glioblastoma in humans is about 5%… Continue reading.