A central Iowa-based company is learning there’s big money in very small things. The founder and chief science officer of BioForce Nanosciences in Ames says if current rates continue, last year’s sales will be exceeded by 400-percent. Dr. Eric Henderson says the ten-year-old company works in bionanotechnology. To understand what that is, Henderson defines nanotechnology as working on the scale of atoms — at one-billionth of a meter.Henderson says “Bionanotechnology is working at the interface between biology and nanotechnology…integrating the concepts and tools of nanotechnology for biological purposes,” to make things like ultra-miniaturized biosensors, integrating silicon with molecules. He says the company has 14 employees now and should double in size this year.Henderson says BioForce has developed a way to print molecules onto a surface, like using an ink-jet printer but with molecules instead of ink on a very small scale, so small, it’s invisible without magnification. He says this particular sort of nanotechnology is becoming very useful in medical research and in cancer testing.He says if the amount of material is extremely limited, like only a few cells, to do a large number of tests on that material and determine if that person has cancer, for example, the tests will have to be very small yet still very accurate. This tool is called a Nano Arrayer, which is billed as “a revolutionary nanoscale surface patterning instrument.” The company is also marketing what’s called the ViriChip, a virus detection and identification product. Henderson says “These technologies combined will significantly improve our ability to uncover and characterize important infectious agents, and provide a means of monitoring response to therapy in serious diseases such as cancer.” For more information, surf to “www.bioforcenano.com.”
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