Star Trek, The Matrix and NKU

When you think nanotechnology, do microscopic machines, Star Trek and The Matrix come to mind? Better add Northern Kentucky University and undergraduate research to the list. Because that's what biology professor Dr. Kristi Martines has her students working on.

"All my student researchers are undergrads and they participate in every aspect of the research, says Martines. In fact, I just took a couple to a Society for Neuroscience conference where they presented some of our work on Parkinson's disease."

More than machines, nanotechnology also applies to drug delivery in the fight against diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and treating neurological injuries. This has been Martines' focus for the past two years.

"We're looking specifically at dendrimers' polymers in which the atoms form many branches and sub-branches along a central backbone of carbon atoms," she said. "They are four and five billionths of a micrometer in size. They have to be that small to reach the brain."

Right now, nearly all drugs for neurological disease must be injected directly into the brain, Martines continued. But that's impractical. You can't visit the doctor every week for a shot in the brain! Conceivably, our nanos could be taken orally, as a nasal spray, or easily injected into the muscles.

Martines and her undergraduate team collaborate with pharmacology students at the University of Kentucky, and some of NKU's own chemistry students under the direction of professors Heather Bullend, Keith Walters and Michigan-based Dendritic Nanotechnologies, Inc.

"When my undergraduates get to graduate or medical school, they're so far ahead of their peers, it's astonishing," exclaimed Martines. "We're proving to the big research schools and institutions that involving undergraduates at this level of scientific investigation ultimately benefits them and the American scientific community as a whole."