Plastics expert wins $500K Lemelson-MIT award by Radka Konkolova

Almost everything is improved every day. So as inventions, especially those from the medical environment. Nowadays people are interested in their health and environment probably more that in the past, because they want to live healthier life in healthier surrounding. So also scientists want to do their best to find something special which should satisfy the request of all the people.

And those scientists who are successful in inventing something cataclysmal are awarded. So as Joseph DeSimone, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at North Carolina State University. This 44 years old man is one of the best plastics expert, which means that he is chemist by body and soul. I think very interesting thing is, how he got to such work or what influenced him to become a chemist. It was thanks to his younger sister chemical set and maybe thanks to his jealousy as well.

In 1990s he was searching for the environmentally friendly way of making plastics and he was successful. Then he developed a process to reduce pollutants from manufacturing plastics. This process involves substituting carbon dioxide for an acid normally used in manufacturing process, what eliminates chemicals which could remain in human bloodstream and mean many risks of causing diseases. It is also very expensive, because building a plant with such technology cost about 40 million USD. This plant went online in Fayetteville in 2002.

Recently he has cooperate with a Duke University cardiologist, Dr. Richard Stack and together they have created an alternative to the metal coronary stents. They have wanted to create something, which should help prevent heart attacks and avoid open-heart surgery. These stents, no matter the material, is implanted into the vessels in order to hold arteries open. This should avoid to the vessels clogging. But the problem of the metal stents has been, that eventually, they can slightly increase a risk of blood clots forming months or years later. But these polymer stents differ from those metal. These should help to open arteries (as well as metal ones) but they shouldn't means such a high risk of vessels clogging, because they should thoroughly dissolve in two years after implementation of them. This solution is certainly better one, because arteries stay open and thanks to polymer, which will fall apart in relatively short-term, the body slowly heals itself and this also reduces the risk of creating fatal blood clots and other diseases.

Here we can see how nanotechnology is spreading, what is in my opinion very important and good too, because it means progress and it is need especially nowadays and in such departments as medicine is. DeSimone, who has won the Lemelson-MIT award of $500,000 wants to use this money to another research, because he thinks that nanomedicine has got “big future” and he hopes that thanks to this every illness, as cancer, diabetes or multiple sclerosis, will be curable. I hope so, because this would be truly perfect and make the lives of people who suffer from these illnesses as well as the lives of their families easier.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080625/ap_on_sc/lemelson_mit_award;_ylt=AhuZfhCi.QlSS7AVTJh1fsEPLBIF

by Radka Konkolova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by Beata Biskova