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FOR
IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
MARCH
2004
WESTWOOD,
MASSACHUSETTS
What the world needs now is a cheaper buckyball
At least
that's
what
Gordon
Fowler
believes.
Fowler
is the
chief
executive
of a
start-up
called
Nano-C,
which
produces
molecules
called
buckminsterfullerenes,
or
buckyballs.
They
sound
funny,
but one
day they
could
save
your
life.
This is
the
juncture
of
nanotech
and
biotech.
Many
researchers
think
nano-scale
molecules
like
Nano-C's
buckyballs,
which
look
like a
scaffold
in the
shape of
a soccer
ball,
have
great
potential
as the
core
component
of a new
class of
drugs.
Buckyballs,
made up
of an
array of
carbon
atoms,
were
only
discovered
in 1985,
and it
wasn't
until
the
1990s
that
anyone
could
reliably
produce
them. (Buckyballs,
also
known as
fullerenes,
were
named
for
Buckminster
Fuller
because
their
structure
resembles
one of
Fuller's
famous
geodesic
domes.)
Making
buckyballs
more
cheaply
is a key
goal for
Nano-C,
an MIT
spinoff.
The
company's
chairman,
a former
MIT prof
named
Jack
Howard,
invented
a new
way of
producing
buckyballs,
called
combustion
synthesis.
''We're
trying
to drive
down the
cost so
that
people
will be
able to
experiment
with all
sorts of
new uses
for
fullerenes,"
says
Fowler.
The
company
now
produces
fullerenes
at a
cost of
about
$20 a
gram,
down
from
several
hundred
dollars
a gram;
Fowler
thinks
that
will
eventually
drop to
50
cents.
One
company
that's
working
with
Westwood-based
Nano-C
to try
to turn
fullerenes
into
drugs is
C Sixty.
C Sixty
of
Houston
negotiated
a
partnership
last
year
with
Merck to
explore
the use
of
fullerenes
to slow
or stop
the
progress
of
diseases
of the
central
nervous
system,
like
Alzheimer's,
Lou
Gehrig's
disease,
and
Parkinson's.
Russ
Lebovitz,
vice
president
of
research
at C
Sixty,
says
that the
fullerenes,
once
they've
been
modified
to find
particular
types of
cells in
the
body,
have an
uncanny
ability
to soak
up, or
scavenge,
the free
radicals
that
seem to
play a
role in
degenerative
diseases.
Nano-C
is
supplying
fullerenes
to C
Sixty.
''We're
joined
at the
hip,"
Lebovitz
says.
Next
week, a
conference
on the
convergence
of
nanotech
and
biotech
is
coming
to
Boston.
C Sixty
and Russ
Lebovitz
will be
part of
it. For
more
information,
visit
www.bccresearch.com.
About
Nano-C
Nano-C, located in Westwood, Massachusetts, is a leader in the
industrial process for fullerenes production. The company has
designed and built a second-generation combustion synthesis reactor
that incorporates features critical for scaling to the large production
rates necessary for full commercialization. With increasingly efficient
production advances, Nano-C technology speeds the discovery and
adoption of fullerene applications.