Tag: thesis

Laura González will defend her Doctoral Thesis on Friday, December 16th at 12 pm at ICMAB

This Friday 16th of December Laura González is going to defend her Doctoral Thesis entitled “Evaluating inorganic nanoparticles in the living organism Caenorhabditis elegans”, supervised by Dr. Anna Laromaine and Dr. Anna Roig

Abstract:
In this thesis, we have used the simple model organism Caenorhabditis elegans as an in vivo biological system to screen inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) with biomedical uses. In particular, we have assessed the behaviour of two types of particles with different composition, size and surface properties: iron oxide NPs coated with citrate and bovine serum albumin, and gold nanoparticles of two different sizes. We have studied their interactions with C. elegans including their uptake, fate, biological effects and NP-responsive molecular mechanisms, and compared our results with previous studies. To this end, we have combined toxicity tests, materials science and imaging techniques and gene expression analysis. We have been able to perform this biological evaluation in the synthetic laboratory where the particles were synthesized and characterised due to the advantageous experiments features of C. elegans.In summary, this thesis exploits the potential of C. elegans as a simple animal model to evaluate NPs in the initial stages of development and contributes to: (i) a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of NPs in C. elegans, in particular studying the influence of NP properties (size, surface coating and core composition) on their in vivo effects, (ii) extend the toolkit of techniques available to characterise nano-bio interactions in small organisms.

The Jury Members will be:

Everyone is invited to join the presentation, that will be held at 12 pm at ICMAB Conference Room Carles Miravitlles. After the defense, there will be a “pica-pica” for everyone in the dining room. 

We welcome the new Ph.D. Students into the N&N Group!

New Ph.D. Students: Ma, Irene, Sole, Yajie and Luo.

Today during the Group Meeting we welcomed the 5 new Ph.D. students that will start their Ph.D. thesis in the N&N Group! We hope you enjoy your stay with us!

  • Ma Zheng: BSc. Electronic Information Science and Technology at Taishan University (Taian, China) and MSc. Condensed Matter Physics at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC, Chengdu, China). His Ph.D. thesis topic will be “Physics of ε-Fe2O3” supervised by Martí Gich. 
  • Irene Anton: BSc.Biotechnology at Universitat de Barcelona and MSc. Biomedical Research at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She will work on “Functionalized bacterial cellulose for skin tissue regeneration” with Anna Roig and Anna Laromaine. 
  • Soledad RoigBSc. Chemistry at Universidad de Valencia and MSc. Nanoscience, Materials and Processes at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Research work at Northeastern University, USA). During her Ph.D. she will work on “Engineering bacterial cellulose nanocomposites” with Anna Roig and Anna Laromaine.
  • Yajie ZhangBSc. Applied Chemistry at the Institute of Surface Micro and Nanomaerials at Xuchuang University (China) and MSc. Applied Chemistry in the Key Laboratory Marine Chemistry and Technology, at Ocean University of China, and will work on “Nanocapsules as drug delivery carriers for pro-angiogenic therapies” with Anna Roig and Anna Rosell (Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR)).
  • Zhongrui LuoBSc. Bioengineering at Nanjing Agricultural University (China) and MSc. Applied Chemistry at Yunnan University (China). His Ph.D. research will be on “Assessment of nanoparticles toxicity using C. elegans as model organism”, with Anna Laromaine. 

Welcome to Pengfei Niu!

Sichuan_University_logoPengfei is a Master Graduate in Polymer Composites from the Univesity of Sichuan in Chengdu (China). He will spend 3 years with us thanks to the financial support of the China Scholarship Council  to complete a Ph.D. working in the development of nanocomposite sensors prepared by Sol-Gel chemistry. We wish him plenty of scientific and personal success.