In the news

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University team has developed a novel testing platform to evaluate how breast cancer cells respond to the recurrent stretching that occurs in the lungs during breathing. The technology is designed to better understand the effects that the local tissue has on metastatic breast cancer to study how metastases grow in a new tissue. “One of the key features of breast cancer is that most patients survive if the disease stays local, but there is a greater than 70% drop in survival if the cells have metastasized,” said Luis Solorio, a Purdue assistant professor of biomedical engineering, who co-led the research team. “However, once the cells leave the primary tumor, they are often no longer responsive to the drugs that initially worked for the patient. We wanted to develop a system that could help us better understand how the physiology of a new tissue space effected tumor cells upon invasion into the new organ.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — What happens when you bring three scientists of diverse disciplines together and give them the resources of two of the country’s top research facilities? In this case, they discover a new material that may help scientists learn more about neurological disorders and possibly take some big steps toward brain-machine interfaces. This pivotal discovery, making use of two user facilities at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, was led by three scientists from Purdue University. Their fields of study are so disparate that without this project, they may never have collaborated. The results of their combined efforts – published in Applied Materials and Interfaces, a magazine of the American Chemical Society – could lead to breakthroughs in each of their disciplines.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — To become more pervasive in daily life, quantum technology needs to better detect single particles of light, called photons, carrying quantum information. The problem is that each photon is a very weak signal, making it difficult for measurement devices to efficiently detect them. Purdue University engineers have proposed a new quantum resource that could help design the next generation of single-photon detectors. The type of quantum resource that the researchers discovered is called a “giant susceptibility,” which is a violent response of a system to a tiny perturbation. This response is necessary for converting a weak signal in the quantum domain to an amplified strong signal like those used by cell phones and other classical technology.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The rapid increase of life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant infections has resulted in challenging wound complications with limited choices of effective treatments. About 6 million people in the United States are affected by chronic wounds. Now, a team of innovators from Purdue University has developed a wearable solution that allows a patient to receive treatment without leaving home. The Purdue team’s work is published in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. A video showing the technology is available at https://youtu.be/UMZpDwYQZJM. “We created a revolutionary type of treatment to kill the bacteria on the surface of the wound or diabetic ulcer and accelerate the healing process,” said Rahim Rahimi, an assistant professor of materials engineering at Purdue. “We created a low-cost wearable patch and accompanying components to deliver ozone therapy.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — For quantum optical technologies to become more practical, there is a need for large-scale integration of quantum photonic circuits on chips. This integration calls for scaling up key building blocks of these circuits – sources of particles of light – produced by single quantum optical emitters. Purdue University engineers created a new machine learning-assisted method that could make quantum photonic circuit development more efficient by rapidly preselecting these solid-state quantum emitters. The work is published in the journal Advanced Quantum Technologies.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — New experimental evidence of a collective behavior of electrons to form "quasiparticles" called "anyons" has been reported by a team of scientists at Purdue University. Anyons have characteristics not seen in other subatomic particles, including exhibiting fractional charge and fractional statistics that maintain a "memory" of their interactions with other quasiparticles by inducing quantum mechanical phase changes. Postdoctoral research associate James Nakamura, with assistance from research group members Shuang Liang and Geoffrey Gardner, made the discovery while working in the laboratory of professor Michael Manfra. Manfra is a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue's Bill and Dee O'Brien Chair Professor of Physics and Astronomy, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and professor of materials engineering. Although this work might eventually turn out to be relevant to the development of a quantum computer, for now, Manfra said, it is to be considered an important step in understanding the physics of quasiparticles.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Developing new quantum science technologies will be the focus of a new national research effort, with Purdue University playing a leading role. The work is supported through a broad effort announced by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. The effort will include more than $1 billion in awards for the establishment of 12 new artificial intelligence and quantum information science (QIS) research institutes nationwide. The $1 billion will go toward NSF-led AI research institutes and DOE quantum information science research centers over five years, establishing 12 multidisciplinary and multi-institutional national hubs for research and workforce development in these critical emerging technologies.

A team led by Zubin Jacob, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University, has won a DARPA QUEST award. The DARPA QUEST program seeks to understand how quantum vacuum fluctuations can be controlled and altered inside matter. Jacob is the PI on the Purdue team, which will develop a new theoretical framework that combines quantum properties of light and condensed matter. New topological phases of matter, their spin photonic properties and Casimir forces will be investigated as part of this DARPA program. In addition to Jacob, the team consists of co-PI Tongcang Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at Purdue and and co-PI Rajib Rahman, an associate professor of physics at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Rahman is an alumnus of Purdue ECE, having earned his MSEE in 2005 and his PhD ECE in 2009.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Your gut bacteria could say a lot about you, such as why you’re diabetic or how you respond to certain drugs. But scientists can see only so much of the gastrointestinal tract to study the role of gut bacteria in your health. What comes out of you is just a small sample of these bacteria, without indicating where they came from in the digestive system. Purdue University researchers built a way to swallow a tool that acts like a colonoscopy, except that instead of looking at the colon with a camera, the technology takes samples of bacteria. The technology could also move throughout the whole GI tract, not just the colon. This tract, in addition to the colon, includes the mouth, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, small intestine and rectum.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Accurately diagnosing the spread of cancer often involves painful and invasive biopsy procedures. The use of a “liquid biopsy,” which involves a simple blood draw, has been shown in a five-year clinical trial to accurately detect and monitor certain kinds of breast cancer. The study involves circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor cells (CTC), genetic and cellular material from tumors that find their way into the patient’s bloodstream. A paper on the clinical trial’s results is published in JAMA Oncology. “These CTC cells are extremely rare,” said Cagri Savran, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. “In a blood sample of eight milliliters, there are billions of cells, but the cells we’re looking for, there may only be three or four.”