From Materials Science to Biomedicine: A Personal Journey (10/01/25)
Department of Materials Engineering
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
&
Indian Institute of Metals - Bangalore Chapter
Fourth Lecture of the PROF. S. RANGANATHAN Distinguished Lecture Series
Speaker and Affliation:
Prof. Kannan M Krishnan
Departments of Materials Sciences and Physics
University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA
When?
10th January, 2025 (Friday), 11.00 AM (India Standard Time)
Where
KPA Auditorium, Dept. of Materials Engineering, IISc, Bangalore
About Prof. S. Ranganathan:
Professor Srinivasa Ranganathan is the NASI Platinum Jubilee Fellow at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His academic career as an educator and researcher in metallurgy at Banaras Hindu University and the Indian Institute of Science during the last four decades has been exceptional. He has contributed significantly to our understanding of the structure of interfaces, quasicrystals, bulk metallic glasses, and nanostructured materials. He has co-authored three books with Alan Mackay and Eric Lord on New Geometries for New Materials, Legendary Wootz Steel with Sharada Srinivasan, and high-entropy alloys with Profs. B.S. Murty and Yeh. He worked together with metallurgical legends such as Professor T.R. Anantharaman, Prof. Alan Cottrell, and Prof Gareth Thomas. This had a profound influence on not just his life, but also on the subject of multi-principal element alloys. “The search for structure continues, and I mainly rely on geometric intuition. I visited higher-dimensional space. In archaeo-metallurgy, I travelled back in time to distant lands in antiquity.”, he says in his article “A search for structure with travels in space and time.” He is a teacher par excellence and has inspired students throughout his teaching career and changed the life of every student, who came in contact with him.
Abstract:
Recent developments in synthesis[1] and optimization of magnetite nanoparticles with negligible toxicity and favorable biodistribution [2], allows for reproducible control of their complex magnetic relaxation behavior even in “extreme” biological environments. This has enabled us to address two of the principal challenges in biomedicine [3], i.e. detecting disease at the earliest possible time prior to its ability to cause damage (imaging and diagnostics) and delivering treatment at the right place, at the right time whilst minimizing exposure (targeted therapy with a triggered release). Central to this work is the size-dependent magnetic properties of nanoparticles, and specifically, tailoring their Néel and Brownian relaxation dynamics in vivo to any specific applied frequency [4]. Such work also requires coordinated efforts in synthesis of highly-monodisperse and phase-pure nanoscale magnetite cores, biochemical surface functionalization, biodistribution and pharmacokinetic studies, advanced characterization using complementary probes, and stochastic modeling [5] of magnetization response. We have made significant contributions to the biologically important studies of self-assembly and hyperthermia treatment (MHT) of cancer, but over the past decade or so, our work has been focused on Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) [6,7], a tracer-based, whole-body imaging technology with high contrast (no tissue background) and nanogram sensitivity [8]. MPI is linearly quantitative with tracer concentration, and has zero tissue depth attenuation [9]; it is also safe and uses no ionizing radiation.
In this talk, I will introduce the underlying relaxation physics relevant to MPI & MHT, and describe results in the development of highly optimized and functionalized nanoparticle tracers for these translational applications. I will then present state-of-the-art imaging results of preclinical in vivo MPI experiments of cardiovascular (blood-pool) imaging [10], stroke [11], GI bleeding [12], and cancer [13,14], all using rodent models. If time permits, I will also discuss a related diagnostic method using magnetic relaxation and illustrate its use for detecting specific protease cancer markers in solution [7]. Throughout this talk, with a historical perspective, I will highlight conceptual ideas that help bridge the gap for physical scientists/engineers interested in working on translational problems in biomedicine [15].
[1] S. J. Kemp, et al RSC Advances, 6, 77452 (2016).
[2] H. Arami, et al, Chem. Soc. Rev. 44, 8576 (2015)
[3] Kannan M. Krishnan, IEEE Trans. Mag. 46, 2523-2558 (2010)
[4] S. A. Shah, et al, Phys. Rev. B92, 094438 (2015)
[5] C. Shasha and Kannan M. Krishnan, Advanced Materials 33, 1904131 (2021)
[6] B. Gleich & J. Weizenecker, Nature 435, 1214 (2005).
[7] S. Gandhi, H. Arami and Kannan M. Krishnan, Nanoletters 16, 3668 (2016)
[8] M. Graeser et al, Scientific Reports, 7, 6872 (2017)
About the Speaker :
Kannan M. Krishnan (Ph.D. 1984, UC, Berkeley) is Professor of Materials Sciences & Physics at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has held visiting appointments in all six continents, including the Brahm Prakash Visiting Chair at IISc in 2016
Prof. Krishnan has pioneered the field of biomedical nanomagnetics, especially the applications of tailored magnetic biomaterials in medicine, emphasizing imaging, diagnostics, and therapy, and including their commercialization and clinical translations. He was also the first to develop a patented material architecture for semiconductor-magnetic device integration, anticipating the need for such heterostructures for spin-injection in Spintronics and also identify a new class of materials ––dilute magnetic dielectrics–– that are both ferromagnetic and insulating and showed that the ferromagnetism in such materials is defect-mediated. He is considered a leading expert on elucidating structure-property-processing correlations at relevant lengths scales using electron and photon probes. He is also a highly recognized teacher, writing two comprehensive textbooks, Fundamentals and Applications of Magnetic Materials (816p, 2016) and Principles of Materials Characterization and Metrology (850p, 2021), both published by Oxford University Press, that are now used worldwide. His collected works will soon be published in two curated volumes entitled Biomedical Nanomagnetics: Synthesis, Relaxation Dynamics and Preclinical Applications (Vol 1) and Magnetic Materials: Fabrication, Applications and Structure-Property Correlations (Vol 2).
Prof. Krishnan is widely recognized in multiple disciplines for his scholarship, research, teaching and mentoring. His awards include the TMS Weertman Educator Award (2024), Alexander von Humboldt Forschungspreis (2016), the TMS Distinguished Engineer/Scientist (2015), IEEE Fink Prize (2012), IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer (2009), Fulbright Specialist (2010), Guggenheim (2004) and Rockefeller (2008) Fellowships, the Burton Medal (MSA,1992), and the College of Engineering Outstanding Educator (UW, 2004) He is an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (London), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.