james tour rice university

T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering

Department of Chemistry

O'Connor Building for Engineering and Science 211A | 713-348-6246 | [email protected]

WEBSITE(S) | Tour Group Rice | Google Scholar Citations

Research Summary

Tour’s scientific research areas include nanoelectronics, graphene electronics, silicon oxide electronics, carbon nanovectors for medical applications, green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction, graphene photovoltaics, carbon supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries, lithium metal batteries, CO2 capture, water splitting to H2 and O2, water purification, carbon nanotube and graphene synthetic modifications, graphene oxide, carbon composites, hydrogen storage on nanoengineered carbon scaffolds, and synthesis of single-molecule nanomachines which includes molecular motors and nanocars and nanomachines that can drill through cell membranes. He has also developed strategies for retarding chemical terrorist attacks. For pre-college education, Tour developed the NanoKids concept for K-12 education in nanoscale science, and also Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero science packages for elementary and middle school education: SciRave ( www.scirave.org ) which later expanded to a Stemscopes-based SciRave. The SciRave program has risen to be the #1 most widely adopted program in Texas to complement science instruction, and it is currently used by over 450 school districts and 40,000 teachers with over 1 million student downloads.

James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. After spending 11 years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, he joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. Tour has about 650 research publications and over 200 patents, with an H-index = 129 and i10 index = 538 with total citations over 77,000 (Google Scholar). He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2014; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014; recipient of the Trotter Prize in “Information, Complexity and Inference” in 2014; and was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2014. Tour was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine, 2013. He was awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, 2012, Rice University; won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society, 2012; was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2011; and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009. Tour was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade, by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey, 2009; won the Distinguished Alumni Award, Purdue University, 2009; and the Houston Technology Center’s Nanotechnology Award in 2009. He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. Tour was the recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007. He also won the Small Times magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Innovator Award in 2006, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, Department of the Navy in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society in 2005, and The Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005. Tour’s paper on Nanocars was the most highly accessed journal article of all American Chemical Society articles in 2005, and it was listed by LiveScience as the second most influential paper in all of science in 2005. Tour has won several other national awards including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry.

Research Areas

Organic Synthesis; Chemical Biology; Spectroscopy & Imaging; Nanomaterial Synthesis

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James M. Tour

T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering

255 Dell Butcher Hall | 713-348-6246 | [email protected]

WEBSITE(S) | Rice Profile | Tour Group | Google Scholar Citations

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JAMES M. TOUR, Ph.D

T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry Professor of Computer Science Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering Rice University Smalley-Curl Institute and the NanoCarbon Center

Tour’s scientific research areas include nanoelectronics, graphene electronics, silicon oxide electronics, carbon nanovectors for medical applications, green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction, graphene photovoltaics, carbon supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries, CO2 capture, water splitting to H2 and O2, water purification, carbon nanotube and graphene synthetic modifications, graphene oxide, carbon composites, hydrogen storage on nanoengineered carbon scaffolds, and synthesis of single-molecule nanomachines which includes molecular motors and nanocars. He has also developed strategies for retarding chemical terrorist attacks. For pre-college education, Tour developed the NanoKids concept for K-12 education in nanoscale science, and also Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero science packages for elementary and middle school education: SciRave that later expanded to Stemscopes-based software. The SciRave program has risen to be the #1 most widely adopted program in Texas to complement science instruction, and it is currently used by over 450 school districts and 40,000 teachers with almost 2 million student downloads.

We hire graduate students and post-doctoral researchers studying in the areas of nanoscale science, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, polymer chemistry, electronics, materials science, and computer science. Our emphases in those areas vary depending on our current grant funding. We take a select number of undergraduate students to work during the school year and over the summer on various projects.

Within our own laboratories, as well as the facilities within the Smalley-Curl Institute and the NanoCarbon Center, we are fortunate to have access to a wide variety of instrumentation for the synthesis and analysis of nanomaterials. We also have active collaborations with several other institutions including the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, Methodist Hospital Research Institute, MD Anderson, and several national and defense department laboratories.

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Dec. 19, 2023

Molecular jackhammers’ ‘good vibrations’ eradicate cancer cells, light-induced whole-molecule vibration can rupture melanoma cells’ membrane.

The Beach Boys’ iconic hit single “Good Vibrations” takes on a whole new layer of meaning thanks to a recent discovery by Rice University scientists and collaborators, who have uncovered a way to destroy cancer cells by using the ability of some molecules to vibrate strongly when stimulated by light.

The researchers found that the atoms of a small dye molecule used for medical imaging can vibrate in unison ⎯ forming what is known as a plasmon ⎯ when stimulated by near-infrared light , causing the cell membrane of cancerous cells to rupture. According to the study published in Nature Chemistry, the method had a 99 percent efficiency against lab cultures of human melanoma cells, and half of the mice with melanoma tumors became cancer-free after treatment.

“It is a whole new generation of molecular machines that we call molecular jackhammers,” said Rice chemist James Tour , whose lab has previously used nanoscale compounds endowed with a light-activated paddlelike chain of atoms that spins continually in the same direction to drill through the outer membrane of infectious bacteria , cancer cells and treatment-resistant fungi .

Unlike the nanoscale drills based on Nobel laureate Bernard Feringa ’s molecular motors, molecular jackhammers employ an entirely different ⎯ and unprecedented ⎯ mechanism of action.

“They are more than one million times faster in their mechanical motion than the former Feringa-type motors, and they can be activated with near-infrared light rather than visible light,” Tour said.

Near-infrared light can penetrate far deeper into the body than visible light, accessing organs or bones without damaging tissue.

“Near-infrared light can go as deep as 10 centimeters (~ 4 inches) into the human body as opposed to only half a centimeter (~ 0.2 inches), the depth of penetration for visible light, which we used to activate the nanodrills,” said Tour, Rice’s T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering. “It is a huge advance.”

The jackhammers are aminocyanine molecules, a class of fluorescent synthetic dyes used for medical imaging.

“These molecules are simple dyes that people have been using for a long time,” said Ciceron Ayala-Orozco, a Rice research scientist who is a lead author on the study. “They’re biocompatible, stable in water and very good at attaching themselves to the fatty outer lining of cells. But even though they were being used for imaging, people did not know how to activate these as plasmons.”

Ayala-Orozco initially studied plasmons as a doctoral student in the research group led by Rice’s Naomi Halas .

“Due to their structure and chemical properties, the nuclei of these molecules can oscillate in sync when exposed to the right stimulus,” Ayala-Orozco said. “I saw a need to use the properties of plasmons as a form of treatment and was interested in Dr. Tour’s mechanical approach to dealing with cancer cells. I basically connected the dots.

“The molecular plasmons we identified have a near-symmetrical structure with an arm on one side. The arm doesn’t contribute to the plasmonic motion, but it helps anchor the molecule to the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane.”

The researchers had to prove that the molecules’ mode of action could not be categorized either as a form of photodynamic or photothermal therapy .

“What needs to be highlighted is that we’ve discovered another explanation for how these molecules can work,” Ayala-Orozco said. “This is the first time a molecular plasmon is utilized in this way to excite the whole molecule and to actually produce mechanical action used to achieve a particular goal ⎯ in this case, tearing apart cancer cells’ membrane.

“This study is about a different way to treat cancer using mechanical forces at the molecular scale.”

Researchers at Texas A&M University led by Jorge Seminario , a quantum chemist and professor of chemical engineering, performed time-dependent density functional theory analysis on the molecular features involved in the jackhammering effect. The cancer studies were performed in mice at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in collaboration with Dr. Jeffrey Myers , professor and chair of the Department of Head and Neck Surgery and director of translational research for the Division of Surgery.

Nanorobotics, Ltd., the Discovery Institute and the Welch Foundation (C-2017-20190330) supported the research.

Molecular Jackhammers Eradicate Cancer Cells by Vibronic-Driven Action | Nature Chemistry | DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01383-y Authors: Ciceron Ayala-Orozco, Diego Galvez-Aranda, Arnoldo Corona, Jorge Seminario, Roberto Rangel, Jeffrey Myers and James Tour https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-023-01383-y

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/07/230630_Orozco_Fitlow_179.jpg CAPTION: Ciceron Ayala-Orozco is a research scientist in the Tour lab at Rice University, and lead author on the study. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University) https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/07/230630_untitled_Fitlow_185.jpg CAPTION: Ayala-Orozco is using a confocal microscope. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University) https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/07/180831_-Tour_fitlow_017.jpg CAPTION: James Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University) https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/RiceNews_TOC_graphics_vertical_DFT_1.jpg CAPTION: The structure of an aminocyanine molecule (a molecular jackhammer) overlaid on top of the calculated molecular plasmon by TD-DFT theory, with the characteristic symmetrical body and long “side arm.” (Image courtesy of Ciceron Ayala-Orozco/Rice University) https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/RiceNews_TOC_graphics_vertical_DFT_2-1.jpg CAPTION: (a) A molecular jackhammer (blue) attaches itself to a cancer cell’s lipid bilayer lining. When stimulated with near-infrared light, it vibrates strongly, causing the cell membrane to tear open. (b) DAPI entering and staining nucleus of the membrane-disrupted A375 melanoma cells visualized by fluorescence confocal microscopy. Scale bar = 25 µm. (Image courtesy of Ciceron Ayala-Orozco/Rice University)

Molecular machines could treat fungal infections: https://news.rice.edu/news/2023/molecular-machines-could-treat-fungal-infections

New weapon targets antibiotic resistance: https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/new-weapon-targets-antibiotic-resistance Bacteria-killing drills get an upgrade: https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/bacteria-killing-drills-get-upgrade Chemists build a better cancer-killing drill: https://news2.rice.edu/2019/05/28/chemists-build-a-better-cancer-killing-drill-2/ Deadly ‘superbugs’ destroyed by molecular drills: https://news2.rice.edu/2019/12/12/deadly-superbugs-destroyed-by-molecular-drills/ Motorized molecules drill through cells: https://news2.rice.edu/2017/08/30/motorized-molecules-drill-through-cells-2/

Tour Group: https://www.jmtour.com/ Rice Department of Chemistry: https://chemistry.rice.edu/ Wiess School of Natural Sciences: https://naturalsciences.rice.edu/

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,552 undergraduates and 3,998 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.