New rules will not affect local nanotech company

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to set up guidelines for
companies that work with nanomaterials to report toxicity reports to
the government.

These guidelines will not affect work done in Mount Pleasant at
Dendritic Nanotechnologies Inc.

“We are not in that business,” said Donald Tomalia, founder,
president and chief technology officer of DNT. “What we work with is
less than gram quantities.”

Tomalia said the company does not have to worry about the new
guidelines because they do not manufacture large amounts of
nanomaterials.

Nanomaterials are smaller than materials in their larger form and
research shows they can be dangerous to the body.

DNT has been working with the Food and Drug Agency to study the
toxicity of dendrimers.

Dendrimers are man-made molecules that are designed and manufactured
at DNT for medical purposes.

Tomalia said DNT began working with Nanotechnology Characterization
Laboratory in early October to gain approval and acceptance for
nanostructures.

“We’re one of the first in the country to be invited by the group,”
he said.

The Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory was established in
2005 by a collaborative effort by the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, the FDA and the National Cancer Institute to perform
toxicity tests on nanoscale materials.

The basic goal of the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory is
to come up with industry standards for nanoscale materials.

Dendrimer research at DNT includes using nanotechnology to deliver
exact amounts of a drug to a specific location in the human body.

The company is also working on dendrimer-based MRI agents that would
increase the image clarity of current MRI machines.

Tomalia said concerns over the safety of nanomaterials will emerge
for companies that produce large amounts of them in products such as
flat-screen televisions and fuel cells.

He said the situation at DNT is very well characterized and safe
because they go through FDA approval.

Linda Nixon, intellectual properties and technical administration
manager at DNT, said there are currently 20 people working at the
company, which includes administrative workers, researchers and Central
Michigan University faculty members.