•
research the causes of cell selectivity and identify “therapeutic
windows”;
•
control plasma and monitor its properties continuously;
•
develop scaling techniques for manufacture.
How do we plan to do this?
Research and development in interdisciplinary teams — involving
physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, microbiology and medicine —
a network composed from different expert institutes. The crucial role
of BMSTU will be to provide the technology and the understanding of
plasmas — i.e., the “plasma design” in a new
Plasma Medicine Laboratory
.
We plan to start this by using plasma technologies developed in house
as well as at our cooperation partner, the Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics. Some examples of MPE technology are shown
below.
To illustrate the possible impact that plasma application may have in
combination with other drugs — here one example. It involves in vitro
studies of glioblastoma cells (incurable brain cancer). The figure shows the
survival of these cells after exposure to different doses TMZ (the standard
chemotherapy treatment) and the survival of the same cell lines after plasma
exposure and after combined plasma-TMZ treatment. For example, at 100
M TMZ alone there was no effect on the cancer cells. With a combined
treatment, however, e.g. 60sec Plasma + 100
μ
M TMZ only 25 % of the
cancer cells remained viable.
6. Colloidal Physics Laboratory (see fig. 12).
Many fundamental
issues in classical condensed matter physics can be addressed experimentally
using model systems of individually visible mesoscopic particles playing
the role of “proxy atoms”. The interaction between such “atoms” is
determined by the properties of the surrounding medium and/or by external
tuning. Along with complex plasmas, the best known example of such
model systems are colloidal dispersions.
Fig. 12. Example of a physical
process that can be studied at the
particle level for small systems all
the way to the limits of cooperative
and self-organised behavior —
phase
separation
. The oil-water effect.
Shown here is a complex plasma
system (data from ISS experiments
— Ivlev et al., 2012). Complementary
studies on equilibrium phenomena
can be made more suitably with
colloidal suspensions. Such studies
give useful information about the
behavior of systems as we approach
further into the nano-world
54 ISSN 0236-3941. Вестник МГТУ им. Н.Э. Баумана. Сер. “Машиностроение”. 2013. № 2
