Cooperation between CAS and Local Authorities

Industrialization of CO2 Based Plastics

In response to high value added utilization of CO2 and development of low carbon industry,? the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC) initiated a R&D on biodegradable CO2 based plastics, breakthroughs have been made in key technologies like combinatory and supporting catalyst based on rare earth ternary catalyst, thermal controlling and mass transportation during bulk polymerization, recovery of unreacted monomer propylene oxide, removal of oligomer and heavy metal zinc contamination from final plastics, toughening while plasticizing of the plastics, etc., which created practical industrialization technique for dozens of thousand ton scale production line. Supported by several funding sources, CIAC for the first time in the world to setup a thousand ton pilot production line in cooperation with the Mengxi High Tech Group in Inner Mongolia in 2004, and finally setup a 30,000 ton production line in Bangfeng Plastics, Taizhou, Zhejiang province, phase one of 10,000 ton line has been running since May 15, 2012, both the CO2 based plastics resin and film have acquired certificate from US Biodegradable Product Institute (BPI), created great potentiality for the future market. The CIAC now holds 3 US patents and 1 Japanese patent, over 20 Chinese patents in catalyst, polymerization, and modification of CO2 based plastics, CIAC is also the applicant of over 20 Chinese patents in the same area. On May 25, 2012, the project passed its final acceptance check.

Nano Manipulator in Targeted Therapy of Lymphoma

Currently, the researches of applying atomic force microscopy (AFM) in life sciences were mainly focused on mammalian adherent cells and microbial cells. This is because that adherent cell can adhere to and spread on the substrate, while bacterial cell has hardy cell wall and these characteristics make both of these two types of cells easy for being imaged by AFM. Mammalian suspended cells are soft and cannot adhere to the substrate and these make the imaging of mammalian suspended cells difficult. The Micro/Nano research group of the Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA), CAS presented a mechanical trapping method based on combining MEMS pillar arrays and electrostatic adsorption with poly-L-lysine. Through the pillar arrays coated with poly-L-lysine, the immobilization of individual living B lymphoma cells and the high-resolution imaging of the ultra structures on the cell surface can be realized. In this way, the topography and elasticity changes of individual B lymphoma cells that were stimulated with different concentrations of Rituximab were observed and measured dynamically. It is shown that, the cells become more corrugated and softer under the simulation of Rituximab, and the change ranges of topography and elasticity are higher when the concentration of Rituximab is higher. These results provide a unique insight into the effects of Rituximab on individual cells. The background of this research is from the realistic needs of the hospital, that is, in the targeted therapy of lymphoma, some patients respond to the treatment while some patients do not respond to the treatment. Hence the underlying mechanisms of the different drug resistance should be investigated to guide the clinical personalized medicine. SIA conducted relevant research in this aspect in joint efforts with the department of lymphoma of the Beijing 307 hospital. Detecting the behavior of single cells using AFM-based nano manipulator to unravel the underlying mechanisms of drug resistance in targeted therapy of lymphoma is a useful complement to traditional bulk averaging, providing novel insights into understanding the properties of single cells and single molecules. The latest progress using nano manipulator in lymphoma targeted therapy was published as a cover paper in Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica (Mi Li, Lianqing Liu, Ning Xi, et al., 2012, 28(6): 1502-1508).