From May 22nd to 26th 2018, Anna Roig was in Copenhagen presenting results of the Magbbris project on magnetic nanoparticles for brain repair after an ictus at the 12th Int Conference of Science and Clinical Applications of Magnetic Carriers.
17th May, 2018
Every spring, ICMAB celebrates its anniversary with a party for all the members of the institute. This year the N&N group members participated in many of the purposed activities: orienteering race (second place for the team of Martí, Jan and Miquel), tango lessons, custumes contest (second prize for the NN group), the concert by the ICMAB-choir (Anna Roig) and the ping-pong tournament where Martí Gich was a finalist!
We all enjoyed the diverse and original activities and thank all the organizers.
Congratulations to Anna Laromaine, Anna Roig and their collaborators from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Tina Tronser (first author) and Pavel A. Levkin for their new paper: Bacterial Cellulose Promotes Long-Term Stemness of mESC! This manuscript was published on ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces the 20th of April 2018.
Abstract: Stem cells possess unique properties, such as the ability to self-renew and the potential to differentiate into an organism’s various cell types. These make them highly valuable in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Their properties are precisely regulated in vivo through complex mechanisms that include multiple cues arising from the cell interaction with the surrounding extracellular matrix, neighboring cells, and soluble factors. Although much research effort has focused on developing systems and materials that mimic this complex microenvironment, the controlled regulation of differentiation and maintenance of stemness in vitro remains elusive. In this work, we demonstrate, for the first time, that the nanofibrous bacterial cellulose (BC) membrane derived from Komagataeibacter xylinus can inhibit the differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC) under long-term conditions (17 days), improving their mouse embryonic fibroblast (MEF)-free cultivation in comparison to the MEF-supported conventional culture. The maintained cells’ pluripotency was confirmed by the mESCs’ ability to differentiate into the three germ layers (endo-, meso-, and ectoderm) after having been cultured on the BC membrane for 6 days. In addition, the culturing of mESCs on flexible, free-standing BC membranes enables the quick and facile manipulation and transfer of stem cells between culture dishes, both of which significantly facilitate the use of stem cells in routine culture and various applications. To investigate the influence of the structural and topographical properties of the cellulose on stem cell differentiation, we used the cellulose membranes differing in membrane thickness, porosity, and surface roughness. This work identifies bacterial cellulose as a novel convenient and flexible membrane material enabling long-term maintenance of mESCs’ stemness and significantly facilitating the handling and culturing of stem cells.
Every three months, the N&N group organizes a lab cleaning day, which is normally accompanied by a pizza lunch, but today there was a novelty: The first N&N Ping-Pong tournament! Congratulations to Anna Roig for being the winner and special thanks to Miquel and Jan for the organization tasks.
We congratulate Nerea Murillo and her supervisors Anna Roig and Concepció Domingo for the Extraordinary PhD Award (Premi Extraordinari de Doctorat) for her thesis entitled “MULTIFUNCTIONAL SILICA-BASED NANOPARTICLES FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS“. Nerea defended her PhD thesis at ICMAB on 2014, her project aimed to fabricate hybrid (organic-inorganic) complex materials as drug carriers using supercritical fluids. The award ceremony will take place next Friday 18th May at the Auditori de Lletres i de Psicologia of the Autonomous Univeristy of Barcelona.
Congratulations to the authors: Anna Laromaine, Tina Tronser, Ivana Pini, Sebastià Parets, Pavel A. Levkin and Anna Roig for their new publication on Soft Matter. The paper entitled “Free-standing three-dimensional hollow bacterial cellulose structures with controlled geometry via patterned superhydrophobic–hydrophilic surfaces” was published on the 17th of April 2018.
Abstract
Bacteria can produce cellulose, one of the most abundant biopolymer on earth, and it emerges as an interesting candidate to fabricate advanced materials. Cellulose produced by Komagataeibacter Xylinus a bacterial strain, is a pure water insoluble biopolymer, without hemicelluloses or lignin. Bacterial cellulose (BC) exhibits a nanofibrous porous network microstructure with high strength, low density and high biocompatibility and it has been proposed as a cell scaffold and wound healing material. The formation of three dimensional (3D) cellulose self-standing structures is not simple. It either involves complex multi-step synthetic procedures or uses chemical methods to dissolve the cellulose and remold it. Here we present an in situ single-step method to produce self-standing 3D-BC structures with controllable wall thickness, size and geometry in a reproducible manner. Parameters such as hydrophobicity of the surfaces, volume of the inoculum and time of culture define the resulting 3D-BC structures. Hollow spheres and convex domes can be easily obtained by changing the surface wettability where the BC grows. The potential of these structures as a 3D cell scaffold is exemplified supporting the growth of mouse embryonic stem cells within a hollow spherical BC structure, indicating its biocompatibility and future prospective.
Between 14 and 16 May 2018, the bars of Barcelona will be full of science. Pint of Science is back in town!
April 11th-13th 2018
Yajie Zhang, PhD student from the N&N group, attended the 15TH EUROPEAN SYMPOSIUM ON CONTROLLED DRUG DELIVERY that took place in Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands. He presented a poster entitled “Multifunctional PLGA Nanocapsules as Drug Carrier for Angiogenic Therapies”.
New publication from the N&N group in collaboration with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya!
Congratulations to all the authors of the manuscript and especially to Miquel Torras (Ph.D. student at the N&N group) and Pol Sallés (previous researcher at the N&N group) for the first publication of their careers! The paper “Fast and Simple Microwave Synthesis of TiO2/Au Nanoparticles for Gas-Phase Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation” has been published on April 12th 2018 at the open access journal Frontiers in Chemistry.
Abstract: The fabrication of small anatase titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles (NPs) attached to larger anisotropic gold (Au) morphologies by a very fast and simple two-step microwave-assisted synthesis is presented. The TiO2/Au NPs are synthesized using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as reducing, capping and stabilizing agent through a polyol approach. To optimize the contact between the titania and the gold and facilitate electron transfer, the PVP is removed by calcination at mild temperatures. The nanocatalysts activity is then evaluated in the photocatalytic production of hydrogen from water/ethanol mixtures in gas-phase at ambient temperature. A maximum value of 5.3 mmol·g−1cat⋅gcat-1·h−1 (7.4 mmol·g−1TiO2⋅gTiO2-1·h−1) of hydrogen is recorded for the system with larger gold particles at an optimum calcination temperature of 450°C. Herein we demonstrate that TiO2-based photocatalysts with high Au loading and large Au particle size (≈50 nm) NPs have photocatalytic activity.
The program “A researcher in your classroom” brought Anna Roig, from the N&N group, to Lliçà d’Amunt, at Institut Lliçà (Tuesday, 3 February 2018), and the ICMAB researcher Agustín Mihi to Institut Dr. Puigvert de Sant Andreu in Barcelona (Wednesday, 4 February 2018). Both audiences were secondary school students of 4t ESO.
The N&N group participates in the @NextGEM_eu project, for which we prepared this video explaining how we work with c.elegans. 🪱
👉 Dr. @PolAlonso1 explains how we use these nematodes and why they are useful for assessing biological effects.
#BioEM #5G
