11:20am Nanostructured interfaces for drug delivery. Mucosal delivery is the most important (mouth, etc.). Have to overcome mucous layer. Oral delivery is very hard because of high pressure and flow. Want to go into intestines and stay there for awhile while drug is delivered. Normal drugs only deliver 2-3% of their dose, the rest just goes through. First they used a nanofab to make a large planar device that sticks for a long time and delivers drugs from some gel sitting in some patterned buckets. Delivery very good. Then they made Si-nanowire-covered spheres. The nanowires are about the size of microvilli. They attach to the epithelial layer very well! Permanently, pretty much, which is ok since the epithelial layer sloughs off every 24 hours. They can attach chemicals to the end of the nanowires, which are 20-60nm in diameter, 4 um long. Put cells on a porous film and inserted into the eye, cells migrated into place on the optic nerve and the film biodegrades. Awesome. She also talks about viral capture a little bit. WOW! That's the fucking way to do it! Design a nanoparticle with a bunch of nanowires that have functional groups that will grab onto viruses and inject them into the body. Common cold is cured!
Nothing of note for the rest of the day. This conference is pretty ghetto. No wifi? Shit, even the dinky little CNID conference had Wifi. Need to go work on my 2nd talk a bit.
Oh, good. The hotel wifi is still down. Because it's easy to conduct business in the 21st century without the internet. Thanks a lot, Wyndham.