Video Player

Nanotechnology and the Study of Human Diseases

Subra Suresh ScD '81: June 10, 2006; Running Time:

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Subra Suresh fleshes out the promise of nanotechnology, at least in regard to our understanding of disease. His talk, which focuses on malaria and its impact on red blood cells, demonstrates how the fields of engineering, biology and medicine are converging.

To function properly, he explains, a red blood cell -- eight micrometers in diameter or 1/10th the thickness of a human hair -- must be able to squeeze through three micrometer openings in blood vessels. Working with a “laser tweezer” and two tiny (nano-sized) glass beads, Suresh can apply pressure to stretch single cells so that they become thin enough to fit through small openings. He uses a computer to simulate in three dimensions how red blood cells might fold and lengthen under normal conditions in the human body.

With malaria, infected red blood cells lose their ability to stretch, and Suresh can measure precisely the degree of deformation. The parasite changes the molecular structure of the cell, which “becomes stiff and sticky,” unable to move through small blood vessels. So the spleen, which normally clears impurities from the body, can’t do its job, and the disease progresses.

With a global group of collaborators, Suresh is working on genetic manipulation of the malaria parasite to see how knocking out individual proteins might impact the structure of the infected cell. This kind of biomolecular measurement and manipulation may some day lead to new therapies for a disease that infects more than 400 million people per year.

Suresh is also applying nanotech approaches to other diseases. He is looking into how cancer cells “become less stiff, move more easily, leading to metastatic invasions.” This may ultimately prove useful in studying breast cancer, he says.

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

“In the last 10 years, we have developed tools so we can take atoms from a position in a bulk material and put them in a different location. We can take interfaces between two materials, engineer them in a way so that atom by atom we can manipulate their properties. We can take a single DNA molecule, pull on it and measure extreme tiny forces. We can study protein folding and links to diseases by reverse engineering. ”

Subra Suresh

About the Speaker

Subra Suresh ScD '81

Dean, MIT School of Engineering
Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering;
Professor of Biological Engineering

Subra Suresh joined the MIT faculty from Brown University in 1993. He has served as the head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and became Dean of the School of Engineering in 2007. His current research focuses on the mechanical responses of single biological cells and molecules and their implications for human health and diseases. Suresh has published more than 210 articles in journals, and is co-inventor of 14 U.S. and international patents.

Suresh is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. His honors include the Gordon Moore Distinguished Scholar award from CalTech, the Brahm Prakash Visiting Professorship from the Indian Institute of Science, selection by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited researchers in Materials Science, the Clark B. Millikan Visiting Professorship at CalTech, the TFR Swedish National Chair in Engineering from the Royal Instiute of Technology, Stockholm and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.