The biomedical nanoscience initiative at USC marked its third anniversary with a pair of notable threes: the attainment of full operational status for three core laboratories and the recruitment of three prolific young researchers.

Research on the nanometer scale—on the order of billionths of a foot—holds particular promise for medicine, because nanoparticles are small enough to circulate in the body but not so small as to vanish quickly into the waste stream. Biomedical nanoscience aims to use nanoparticles for new diagnostic tests and treatments.

At their recent annual meeting, USC faculty involved in the initiative compared notes, heard presentations from their peers and external speakers, and assessed progress to date.

Richard Cote, professor of pathology and urology in the Keck School of Medicine, co-chair of the initiative along with Mark Thompson of USC College, highlighted recent achievements from his and Thompson's interdisciplinary research group, which also includes Chongwu Zhou of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

"This has been a very successful effort that has resulted in publications and major grant funding," Cote said.

Funding for the group from federal agencies and private foundations over the past three years totaled more than $8 million to Cote's group, in collaboration with Thompson and Zhou at USC, Y.C. Tai at the California Institute of Technology and others.

More importantly, the group's research has led to clinical trials for treatments of prostate cancer with a microfilter that traps tumor cells, and for a new nanoscale method to detect bladder cancer.

"This has resulted in a whole series of patents and patent filings," Cote said. The group has formed two companies to translate the research into real-world clinical treatments.

Randolph Hall, vice provost for research advancement, reminded the group that biomedical nanoscience is one of USC's primary research emphases. To that end, Executive Vice President and Provost C. L. Max Nikias has invested in the creation and upgrade of core laboratories to support the initiative.

The university now maintains six core labs under the nanoscience umbrella: cell and tissue imaging, nanobiophysics, nanoimaging, nanofabrication, nuclear magnetic resonance and proteomics.

Three of the labs are fully operational, with the rest expected to follow in the near future.

The nanobiophysics core, established in 2007, already has served 19 research groups in five schools, said director Xiaojiang Chen, a structural biologist at the College. The new instruments helped Chen's group to describe an anti-HIV protein in a study published this year in the journal Nature.

A group led by Zhou and Richard Roberts, a chemist at the College, along with Thompson and Cote, has used the core's instruments to design methods for the possible detection and treatment of the SARS virus and other pathogens.

The cell and tissue imaging core has added $1.3 million of instrumentation over the past year, including a scanning electron microscope, a transmission electron microscope and a live cell imager, according to lab manager Ernesto Barron.

The new proteomics core is dedicated to the identification and study of proteins. Associated mostly with food in the public mind, proteins are omnipresent in the body as the products of gene expression, disease and immune response.

The exact role of most of the one million proteins in the body remains unknown, said Ebrahim Zandi of the Keck School of Medicine, who directs the proteomics core.

Since opening in September, the core already has served 10 research groups and has supported several pending proposals for large-scale proteomics projects.

"We're very pleased with the outcome from these investments," Hall said.

The other part of the provost's investment is in young talent.

The initiative has sponsored three new hires: Andrea Armani of USC Viterbi studies optical sensing of medically significant molecules; Alex Benderskii, a physical chemist coming to USC College in the fall of 2009, uses lasers to study variations in molecule shapes and functions; and Julio Camarero of the USC School of Pharmacy is developing ways to improve the sensitivity of diagnostic microsensors by ensuring that any "soft" matter on the sensors, such as proteins, does not lose key properties when it is attached to the hard chip underneath.

The highest remaining priority, Hall said, is the recruitment of additional senior faculty to provide research leadership and attract more students and researchers.