Organic Chemistry for Nanomedicine

Organic Chemistry for Nanomedicine

Relatore
Prof. Francesco Nicotra - Università Bicocca - Milano

Data
16-giu-2017 - Ora: 11:30 Sala Verde

Nanomedicine consists in the use of engineered nanodevices and nanostructures to monitor, repair, construct and control human biological systems at the molecular level. Nanomedicine projects require multidisciplinary approaches in which medical, biological, chemical and engineer expertise must be strongly connected. The seminar will present the contribution of Organic Chemistry in a couple of nanomedicine projects, the first one devoted to the development of nanoparticles for therapy and diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (FP7, NAD), and the second devoted to the development of nanostructured biomaterials for regenerative medicine (PRIN2011). In the NAD project liposomes have been functionalysed with ligands of the Aβ-peptides responsible for the formation of fibrils, and with APO-E peptides favouring the transport through the blood brain barrier. In vivo studies showed the capacity of such liposomes to ameliorate memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease mouse models. The project resulted in the creation the spin-off company AmypoPharma. The regenerative medicine project developed glycosylated biomaterials and studied the influence of the sugars in the cell fate. Different glycans have been covalently linked at the surface of biocompatible materials such as polypropylene, and biomaterials such as collagen, exploiting various chemoselective approaches. The biological results obtained on osteoarthritic models of mice and neuroblastoma cells revealed the relevance of collagen glycol-functionalysation. 
Data pubblicazione
6-giu-2017

Dipartimento
Biotecnologie