The poet William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand. Shuming Nie sees it in a quantum dot.

Exploring the human body at the molecular level, Nie designs and engineers technologies on the scale of the nanometer, or one-billionth of a meter, a measurement approximately 50,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Nanotechnology has the potential to improve the lives of patients suffering from cancer and other diseases. It promises to improve early detection of cancer, increase the accuracy of cancer diagnoses, and make cancer treatments more effective.

Currently the Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in Biomedical Engineering, a joint department of Emory and Georgia Tech, Nie came to Emory in 2002 already a leader in nanotechnology research. His publication with Warren C.W. Chan in Science (1998) demonstrated the biological applications of semi-conductor quantum dots, making them one of the first two research teams in the world to do so. (The other team published their article in the same issue of Science.) Quantum dots are nanoparticles whose mechanical compositions are altered through a process called 'size confinement.' This process allows each dot to emit at a different level of energy and take on a unique color. The dots are small enough to penetrate cells. Nie and Chan demonstrated their effectiveness as colored labels or markers for tracking biological processes, including the growth of tumors. Since publication, the original article has been cited more than 1200 times. They received the 2005 Rank Prize (UK) "for the Realization of Quantum Dot Nanocrystals as Biological Labels."

Thanks to Nie's leadership, the Emory-Georgia Tech collaboration in nanotechnology engineering and clinical applications has grown exponentially in the last three years. Nie serves as principal investigator for three large-scale National Institute of Health grants that support nanotechnology for cancer applications, including a $19 million grant that established the Emory-Georgia Tech Nanotechnology Center for Personalized and Predictive Oncology in 2005, a $7.2 million Bioengineering Research Partnerships grant for linking nanotechnology and tumor behavior, and a P20 NIH Roadmap grant for the development of molecular and cellular imaging probes. Today Nie oversees 25 doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows in multiple labs across the Emory campus. He works with 75 researchers from Emory, Georgia Tech, and other institutions at the Emory-Georgia Tech Center, housed on Tech's campus. These cross-institutional collaborations, he says, make it possible to work at the intersection of science, engineering, and medicine. "Without the engineering strength at Georgia Tech and the medical expertise at Emory, we would not be able to pull together this large of a program," Nie says.

Within the next three to five years, Nie envisions several three clinical investigations in his labs on the leading edges of nanotechnology research:

• Early detection of rare tumor cells and monitoring therapeutic effectiveness.
  Researchers will test the effectiveness of using magnetized nanoparticles to pull cancer cells out of the blood and thereby enable earlier detection screening. They also will use nanotechnology to monitor the effectiveness of a cancer patient's treatment. Currently, many patients wait at least three months to learn if their chemotherapy drugs are working, an exhausting process that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Using nanotechnology to analyze a patient's molecular profile has the potential to cut down this waiting period, so that within two to three weeks of beginning a chemotherapy drug, doctors will be able to determine if it meets the needs of an individual patient.
  
  
• Testing "targeted" nanoparticle drugs for the treatment of cancers.
  'Target hit' nanotechnology will allow a cancer drug to find unhealthy tumor cells while leaving healthy cells alone. Nie and his researchers plan to seek FDA approval for this technology as an investigational drug (IND) for ovarian, breast, and lung cancer patients. They also are developing biodegradable nanomaterials, so that the carriers for these 'target hit' drugs will decompose on contact with water and certain enzymes, leaving no toxic substances in the body.
  
  
• Molecular profiling of tumor specimens
  This division of nanotechnology will help researchers predict outcomes for individual cancer patients and identify treatments that will be most effective. Nie's researchers are compiling a "retrospective" database (tissue specimens from deceased patients) that will help them profile the newly diagnosed and prepare individualized treatments. In the long term, profiling tumor specimens at the molecular level will allow doctors to personalize cancer therapies for their patients, signaling the end of 'one size fits all' treatment regimens. "This is why our Center has the words 'predictive' and 'personalized' in its title," Nie says.

An essential element of these clinical trials is the translation of findings and discoveries into real-world applications. Such translations thrive in an interdisciplinary setting. At Emory, Nie's teams include researchers and students in biomedical engineering, pathology, radiology, urology, pharmacology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and medical and surgical oncology. At Georgia Tech, collaborators come from the departments of biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and engineering, chemistry, and biochemistry.

Despite running three federally funded centers, each year Nie offers a class called 'Problem-Based Learning' for Emory-Georgia Tech doctoral students and for undergraduates. "It's been an interesting course to teach," Nie says. "We divide into small groups and solve problems together throughout the semester." And as Nie's research continues to demonstrate, the future of problem-solving in the clinical setting may well require seeing the world - and the human body - at the molecular level.