Jan Grzelak obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Nanostructure Engineering at theUniversity of Warsaw (Poland). Then he started studying the Master program at the same university, also in Nanostructure Engineering. Now he is doing his second and last year of Master with an Erasmus program at the UAB, on Advanced Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
Jan will join our N&N group atICMAB, and will be supervised by Martí Gich and Anna Laromaine. He will be working on alumina tubes with palladium nanoparticles, using bacterial cellulose as a template for the synthesis.
The scientific leaders of this B·Debate are Francesc Xavier Avilés, from the Institut de Biotecnologia i Biomedicina (IBB) – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) andBoris Turk, from “Jožef Stefan” Institute (IJS) – Ljubljana University, Slovenia.
The objective is to bring together national and international experts in the field to discuss the future perspectives and strategies for the current challenges on molecular imaging.
The B·Debate will focus on molecular, cell, tissue and small animals research, and to their biomedical applications, including non-invasive diagnostic, imaging-guided surgery, multimodal scanning and theranostics.
For sure this B·Debate will be useful for Anna and for the group, since imaging is a powerful tool to study the interaction of inorganic nanoparticles with living organisms, such as C. elegans, which is the topic of Laura González thesis, for example.
Follow-up meeting after seven months of starting the E-BCN project (Engineering Bacterial Cellulose Nanocomposites).
Two PhD students, Soledad Roigand Irene Anton, will be added to the project team. Soledad will work in structuring and patterning bacterial cellulose, and Irene in applying bacterial cellulose nanocomposites for skin regenaration.
Participants of the project include: Anna Roig, Dino Tonti, Jordi Faraudo, Anna Laromaine, Martí Gich, Anna May, Soledad Roig and Irene Anton.
Elisa carried out her PhD here at ICMAB, within the N&N Group, and in collaboration with Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), under the supervision of Anna Roig (ICMAB) and Anna Rosell (VHIR), in the framework of the UAB PhD program.
The awards ceremony will take place on November 18, 2016, at 6.30 pm, at Hotel Campus (Edifici Blanc).
Elisa is now working in a startup biopharmaceutical company (Addex Therapeutics) in Geneva (Switzerland), which develops new molecules for the treatment of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and epilepsy. Elisa is investigating the effects of these molecules in humans, in different Clinical Research studies.
Congratulations Elisa!
More information about the Extraordinary PhD award resolution here.
The thesis can be found in the UAB Digital Document Repository : http://ddd.uab.cat/record/128025
Jordi Llorca, from Institut de Tècniques Energètiques (INTE-UPC) explains in this video from the newspaper ara, one of the projects in which we collaborate: photocatalysis for hydrogen production from sunlight, a photocatalyst formed by TiO2/Au nanoparticles, and water:
In the video he says: “We obtain hydrogen -which is not in its free state in the Earth- to act as a source of energy, and to obtain it, we use use sunlight -completely clean-, a photocatalyst containing nanoparticles, and water.”
The Final Meeting of the COST Action on Hybrid Interfaces (HINT) will take place on October 10-12, 2016, at the Reitoria building of the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The meeting aims at sharing the learned lessons on design, control, and dynamics of interfaces in hybrid organic-inorganic materials over the last four years in which the different partners have worked on this topics.
Anna Roig will participate in the meeting and will give a talk on “Bio-screening of protein coated SPIONs: in vitro and in vivo by the C. elegans model” (Monday, October 10, 5.40 pm).
Anna Laromaine is one of the five scientific women granted by L’Oréal in the iniciative “For Women in Science” #Ponlescara, to visualize scientific women in various disciplines and bring them close to society and to students.
During the day, the five scientific women, with other three more, have answered the questions of more than 100 highschool students. The idea is to see that women are in all the scientific areas, and that the scientific career is a possibility to consider.
The five scientific women have received 15.000 € to spend in Research Projects in their scientific areas within the XI Edition of the “Bolsas de Investigación 2016” program. Apart from Anna Laromaine, the other granted women are Vanesa Esteban, Azucena Bardaji, Jaione Valle and Anna Shnyrova. The ceremony took place in Madrid, with Cristina Cifuentes, president of the Comunidad de Madrid, and Carmen Vela, secretaria de Estado in Research, Development and Innovation.
Laura González has obtained a fellowship to do an internship in a start-up company in Latin America or Portugal for a period of 6-12 weeks for her entrepreneurship project GMP Nanotech, within the BoosterWe progam.
The GMP Nanotech project she presented consist in the business plan of the manufacture of inorganic nanoparticles for biomedical applications with pharmaceutical quality.
The BoosterWe program supports entrepreneurs from universities in Latin America, Spain and Portugal to put in place innovative business initiatives. The program offers hands-on learning experience and business management through stays in small and medium consolidated companies that operate in another country and in complementary sectors than the entrepreneurs projects. These stays will last for 6 to 12 weeks. The beneficiaries will have a grant to help cover travel expenses and accommodation in the country of destination, as well as personalized mentoring of their new projects. The overall objective of BoosterWE is to energize the university entrepreneurship in the Ibero-American region, promoting the creation of highly innovative companies, and especially promoting the incorporation of female talent within the university entrepreneurship with scientific and technological base.
Abstract: Nanoparticles, whose surface adsorbs proteins in an uncontrolled and non-reproducible manner will have limited uses as nanomedicinal products. A promising approach to avoid nanoparticle non-specific interactions with proteins is to design bio-hybrids by purposely pre-forming a protein corona around the inorganic cores. Here, we investigate, in vitro and in vivo, the newly acquired bio-identity of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) upon their functionalization with a pre-formed and well-defined bovine serum albumin (BSA) corona. Cellular uptake, intracellular particle distribution and cytotoxicity were studied in two cell lines: adherent and non-adherent cells. BSA decreases nanoparticle internalization in both cell lines and protects the iron core once they have been internalized. The physiological response to the nanoparticles is then in vivo evaluated by oral administration to Caenorhabditis elegans, which was selected as a model of a functional intestinal barrier. Nanoparticle biodistribution, at single particle resolution, is studied by transmission electron microscopy. The analysis reveals that the acidic intestinal environment partially digests uncoated SPIONs but does not affect BSA-coated ones. It also discloses that some particles could enter the nematode’s enterocytes, likely by endocytosis which is a different pathway than the one described for the worm nutrients.
Keywords: Iron oxide nanoparticles; Protein corona; Cytotoxicity; C. elegans; Biodistribution.
