Luis Liz-Marzán

Afiliación:

CINBIO and CIC biomaGUNE

Título:

On the Growth Mechanisms and Optical Response of Chiral Metal Nanoparticles

Abstract:

The field of chirality has seen a strong rejuvenation due to the observation of nanoscale chirality in plasmonic nanoparticles. This lecture will highlight recent advances in the field of plasmonic chirality, including novel methods for the synthesis of optically active plasmonic nanomaterials. Although much research in this field has been related to chiral nanostructures formed by the directed self-assembly of gold nanorods on various chiral templates, recent work has demonstrated the possibility of employing the well-known seeded-growth method to endow colloidal nanoparticles with chiral features. Recently developed approaches will be introduced, comprising either the use of chiral amino acids or the self-organization of surfactant micelles into chiral structures on nanoparticle seeds. These concepts open up a wide range of possibilities, by playing around with the variety of potential chiral co-surfactants, seed morphologies and metal compositions, which have been studied in the context of the seeded growth of metal nanoparticles. We demonstrate that the addition of chiral additives leads to different types of chiral features in the overgrown nanoparticles, resulting in high optical handedness, which can be tuned through the visible and the near IR.

Sovan Sarkar

Afiliación:

Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK

Título:

Biomedical implications of autophagy in human pluripotent stem cell-derived neuronal platforms of rare neurodegenerative diseases

Abstract:

Autophagy is an intracellular degradation process that is essential for cellular survival, tissue homeostasis and human health. The housekeeping functions of autophagy in mediating the clearance of aggregation-prone proteins and damaged organelles are vital for post-mitotic neurons. Improper functioning of this process contributes to the pathology of myriad human diseases including neurodegeneration. Impairment in autophagy has been reported in several neurodegenerative diseases where pharmacological induction of autophagy has therapeutic benefits in cellular and transgenic animal models. However, emerging studies suggest that the efficacy of autophagy inducers as well as the nature of the autophagy defects may be context- dependent, and therefore, studies in disease-relevant experimental systems may provide more insights for clinical translation to patients. With the advancements in human stem cell technology, it is now possible to establish disease-affected cellular platforms from patients for investigating disease mechanisms and identifying candidate drugs in the appropriate cell-types such as neurons that are otherwise not accessible. Towards this, patient-derived human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have demonstrated considerable promise in constituting a platform for effective disease modelling and drug discovery. Multiple studies have utilized hiPSC models of neurodegenerative diseases to study autophagy and evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of autophagy inducers in neuronal cells. This talk will provide an overview of our work in human pluripotent stem cell-derived neuronal platforms for understanding the homeostatic role of autophagy in human neurons, as well as the defective autophagy mechanisms and therapeutic modulation of autophagy in rare neurodegenerative diseases.

María Mayán

Afiliation:

CellCOM group. The Institute of Biomedical Research of A Coruña (INIBIC). SERGAS. Spain

Title:

Novel therapeutic target to improve the anti-tumour immune response and efficacy of targeted cancer therapy

Abstract:

Connexin proteins (Cxs) are the basic components of hemichannels and gap junctions, taking part in cellular signalling and communication with both channel-dependent and independent roles. Cx43 is involved in both the stromal and immune-associated tumour microenvironment, engaging in therapy response as well. Recent research supports the participation of Cx43 gap junctions in antigen cross presentation, cytotoxic T lymphocyte response, antigen-presenting dendritic cell (DC)-mediated T-cell activation and proliferation, DC-mediated natural killer (NK) cell activation and NK cytotoxicity. On the other hand, we have found that Cx43 enhances cellular senescence and cell death in different tumour types depending of the driver mutations. Based on the obtained results we have designed a new therapeutic strategy using engineering exosomes to modulate Cx43 and to increase the efficacy of targeted drugs that induce DNA damage such as PARP and BRAF/MEK inhibitors. Our strategy significantly increases the efficacy of these targeted therapies and prevents drug resistance by enhancing cell death. Furthermore, in cocultures of patient-derived, immortalized and EGFR-CAR-modified NKs with the BRCA1 mutated TNBC cells, Cx43 restoration in tumour cells elicited a significantly higher cytotoxic NK antitumour response than wild type cells, presumably in a gap junction independent manner. The results, protected by three EU patents applications, reveal Cx43 as a promising novel therapeutic target to increase the efficacy and to resensitize de novo resistant tumour cells to targeted therapies such as PARPi, as well as to boost NK cytotoxicity against breast cancer.

Katherine Villa

Afiliación:

Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ)

Title:

Visible-light-responsive photocatalytic micromotors based on single-component semiconductors

Abstract:

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in light-driven photocatalytic micromotors. This is mostly due to their fast motion activation under light stimuli, notable speeds, and remarkable chemical stability. [1] Compared to photoactive organic compounds, the diverse range of available semiconductor materials offers a greater degree of flexibility in designing micromotors with multiple light responses and motion behaviors. The first part of this talk will focus on the fundamental principles of self- propelled photocatalytic micromotors. Then, the different approaches for diminishing the fabrication costs and enhance the synthesis yields will be presented as well as our efforts to design efficient visible-light-responsive micromotors. [2-3] The versatility and potential of these photoactivated micromachines for removing microbial and chemical contaminants from liquid and solid matrixes under visible-light irradiation will be demonstrated as well.[4-5]

References [1] K. Villa, et al. Chem.Soc. Rev. 2019, 48, 4966-4978. [2] K. Villa, et al. ACS Nano 2018, 12, 12482–12491. [3] X. Yuan, et al. Small 2023, 2207303. [4] K. Villa, et al. ACS Nano 2019,13, 8135-8145. [5] K. Villa, et al. Cell Rep. Phys. Sci., 2020. 1, 100181.

Sara Abalde-Cela

Afiliation:

INL-Braga (Portugal)

Title:

Optofluidic devices for multiomic disease diagnosis

Abstract:

The capacity of microfluidic platforms as tiny labs transitioned from a potential to a reality as demonstrated in the past 20 years. The microfluidics community developed extremely advanced systems able to perform almost any chemical and/or biological lab protocol. However, in order to develop integrated lab-on-a-chip diagnostic platforms, it is crucial to couple microfluidic devices with detection strategies able to match the inherent properties of microfluidics: high-throughput, automation and miniaturisation. One of those detection techniques is surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy, an ultrasensitive and highly selective analytical technique with multiplexing ability. SERS is based on the use of plasmonic nanoparticles that act as nanoantennas and augment the very specific Raman signatures of molecules close to the nanostructured surfaces. We have shown how the integration of different SERS sensing substrates and strategies within microfluidics and microdroplets offers a great flexibility for the diagnosis of several biological species and/or events. We will show examples in the context of liquid biopsy demonstrating the single-cell multiplex phenotypic analysis in a microdroplet, the detection of panels of mutations in cancer or the differentiation of cancer versus healthy cells. These approaches may be transferred to different analytical fields, such as the detection and discrimination of foodborne pathogens, bacteria or viruses in food or water samples.

Roberto de la Torre Martínez

Afiliation:

Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Title:

How does the claustrum shape cortical activity?

Abstract:

The claustrum (CLA) is a brain nucleus between the insula and striatum implicated in a wide range of behaviors. Underpinning all these behavioral phenotypes is the cell-type specific targeting of the cortex by different CLA projection populations. A systematic study to identify the cellular targets of CLA projections to the cortex has, however, not been undertaken. This paper focused on the cortical targets of CLA at the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We combine in vivo multiunit recordings in awake mice, ex vivo whole-cell recordings, optogenetics and pharmacology to investigate which cortical layers and cell types in the ACC were targeted by CLA neurons and the influence of the claustral VGLUT2 subpopulation. We report that CLA stimulation in awake mice produce in the ACC a brief excitation followed by inhibition, mainly due to recruitment of fast spiking neurons (FS) with little impact on the regular-spiking (RS) cortical neurons. We show that CLA projections target all layers of the ACC with monosynaptic excitatory input, but that the responses depend on the identity of the presynaptic CLA projection, the layer and the cell-type of the postsynaptic neuron in the ACC. This study provides novel insights to the organizing principles of CLA projections to the ACC and provide an initial framework for further research on downstream cellular mechanisms at the cortex to enable eventual understanding of how different CLA-affected behavioral phenotypes occur.

Patricia Horcajada

Afiliation:

Advanced Porous Materials, IMDEA Energy, Móstoles, Spain

Title:

Metal organic frameworks: an efficient tool in nanomedicine

Abstract:

The involvement of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) in biomedical applications is currently one of the hot topics in the emerging field of hybrid porous solids. In particular, nanometric iron carboxylate MOFs (nanoMOFs) have recently attracted a great deal of attention owing to their large porosity and versatile composition, enabling to entrap remarkable loadings of a wide variety of active ingredients, including drugs and macromolecules (e.g. RNA, proteins).[1] Several examples of successful formulations targeting different administration routes (e.g. intravenous, oral, cutaneous, pulmonary) and therapies (e.g. infection, cancer) will be presented. However, for the practical use of MOF nanocarriers, it is necessary to investigate their safety, biodistribution and efficiency. Here, the administration of MOFs by different administration routes will be presented.[2]

References: [1] S. Rojas et al., Coord. Chem. Rev., 2019, 388, 202; R. Ettlinger et al. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2022, 51, 464; S. Lelouche et al. Expert Op. Drug Deliv., 2022, 19, 1417 [2] T. Simon-Yarza et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2017, 56(49), 15565; C. Carrillo et al, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58(21), 7078; C. Fernandez-Paz et al. ACS App. Mater. Inter., 2020, 12(23), 25676; S.D. Taherzade et al, Nanomater. 2020, 10, 2296; A. Botet-Carreras et al. J Mater Chem B, 2021, 9, 2233; T. Hidalgo et al., Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 934; S. Rojas et al. ACS Nano. 2022, 16, 4, 5830; A. Arenas-Vivo et al. Pharmaceutics 2023, 15(1), 301; B. Fodor et al. unpublished results

M. Luz Calle

Afiliation:

Facultad de Ciencias, Tecnología e Ingenierías, Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya

Title:

coda4microbiome: compositional data analysis for microbiome studies

Abstract:

Understanding human-microbiome relationship and how it can be modulated is a frontier for preventive medicine and for the medical management of chronic diseases and it represents an opportunity for food and pharma industry. Although the human microbiome has long been known to influence human health and disease, until recently, the composition and properties of the human microbiota were largely unknown because their study was limited to in vitro studies where specific microorganisms were isolated and cultured. High-throughput DNA sequencing technologies have revolutionized this field by allowing the study of the genomes of all microorganisms of a given environment. From a statistical point of view, microbiome data analysis is challenging because it involves high-dimensional structured multivariate sparse data. Furthermore, microbiome data is compositional since raw abundances and the total number of sequences for each sample are not by itself informative, as they depend on technical issues such as laboratory sample preparation and sequencing depth. In this talk I will discuss the effects of ignoring the compositional structure of microbiome data and will present coda4microbiome, a new methodology for analyzing microbiome data within the Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA) framework in both, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. The algorithm relies on the analysis of log-ratios between pairs of components and variable selection is addressed through penalized regression on the “all-pairs log-ratio model”, the model containing all possible pairwise log-ratios. I will illustrate the method with data from a Crohn’s disease study (cross-sectional data) and on the developing microbiome of infants (longitudinal data).

Paco Fernández Trillo

Afiliation:

Centro Interdisciplinar de Química e Bioloxía y Facultade de Ciencias. Universidade da Coruña

Title:

New Polymers to Interface with Biology and Medicine

Abstract:

In this talk, I will give an overview of the research we conduct in my laboratories, where we combine supramolecular, peptide and polymer chemistry to prepare well-defined nanomaterials for biomedicine. In particular, we employ dynamic and responsive chemistries that allow us to explore biological activity (e.g. siRNA delivery, microbial behaviour) in a timely fashion and understand how our polymers and nanoparticles affect biological function. A strong focus in our laboratories is to develop materials for drug delivery, in particular polymers and particles sensitive to external stimuli, which we use for the delivery of antimicrobials or nucleic acids. To this end, we will briefly discuss our work on the enzyme responsive delivery of antimicrobials and food additives, the delivery of nucleic acids to cells and tissues or our work in developing biofilms for biotechnology.