The workshop included the participation of several entrepreneurs coming from science and technology who presented their current projects. Among them, Prof. Puntes gave a short talk on his experience in the generation of tech-based start-up companies, and particularly on his new project BiogasPLUS – that is based on a patent from our group.

Further details and program here:

http://www.irec.cat/noticies-irec/jornada-qenergia-y-emprendimiento-de-la-investigacion-a-la-creacion-de-empresasq.html

Symposium U: Design of multifunctional nano-objects for biomedical applications

• Víctor Puntes will be giving the talk “Designing Nanobots to fight Cancer” on Tuesday May 28 at 11:15.

Symposium F: Nanomaterials for energy conversion and storage

• Neus Bastús will give the talk “Synthesis and Catalytic Properties of Metal and Metal-based Hybrid Nanoparticles” on Wednesday May 29 at 9:45.
• Jordi Piella will presenting the poster “Size tailoring of TiO2 nanoparticles via agglomeration state and its relation to photocatalytic properties” on Monday May 27 at 16:30.

Symposium Q: Bionanomaterials for imaging, sensing and actuating

• Eudald Casals will be giving the talk “Reactivity of Engineered Inorganic Nanoparticles: Insights into nanotoxicity mechanisms” on Thursday May 30 at 11.40.
• Joan Comenge will be giving the talk “Gold Nanoparticles as agents for drug delivery: Detoxifying the chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin” on Wednesday May 29 at 14:50.
• Ngoc Tran will be presenting the poster “Nanoparticle Behaviour in Contact with Different Body Fluids: From Sweat to Serum” on Tuesday May 28 at 16:00.
• Sofía Rubio will be presenting the poster “The same formulation, a different effect. Controlling conformation of NanoBioconjugates” on Tuesday May 28 at 16:00.

We look forward to participating of this major event!

For more information on the conference, please see: http://www.emrs-strasbourg.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=569&Itemid=1583

Registration is open till May 15.

This two-day workshop aims to present, to the larger academic community, the work done by the PhD students of several institutions based on the UAB Campus, working on Materials Science & Nanotechnology: the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB), the Institut Català de Nanotecnologia (ICN) and the Centre d’Investigació en Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (CIN2).

The event also aims to promote networking between students, and it is directly organized by the students themselves, as it was their own initiative, later supported by their institutions.

The event will take place on May 13 and 14, 2013, at the UAB Campus in Bellaterra:

Monday May 13: ICMAB Conference Room

Tuesday May 14: CIN2 Building Conference Room

The registration is free, at: http://www.icmab.es/jphd2013/

The Inorganic Nanoparticles Group is very proud to have our PhD students Sofía Rubio, Joan Comenge and Jordi Piella not only participating of the event, but also contributing through its Coordinating (Sofía) and Organizing (Joan and Jordi) Committees. Congratulations!

This workshop is meant to disseminate the scientific results achieved within the last 42 months by the EU-FP7 project MAGNIFYCO, on the topic: Magnetic nano-containers for combined hyperthermia and controlled drug release. Additionally, it includes the presence of external high level keynote and invited speakers working in closely related topics, such as Nanomaterials, Physical & Chemical Characterization, Functionalization, Diagnosis, Targeting and Hyperthermia.

The workshop will take place February 20-22 in Barcelona, in the Aula Magna “Enric Casassas” of the School of Chemistry and Physics, Universitat de Barcelona (Avinguda Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona). More information can be found at: http://www.magnifyco.eu/magnifyco-2013-workshop.

You are all invited to attend! (registration is free, till February 5, 2013).

Below follows the abstract of Víctor’s talk.

Inserting inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) into biological media is quite challenging. Specially if those NPs are supposed to perform a certain task in a certain moment. First of all there are aspects of simple aggregation, determined by density, size, concentration, media and surface state. Inorganic NPs are happy at low concentrations in low electrolyte concentration to have use of their high surface charge to overcome the handicaps of their high density and compactness. Besides, their biological counterparts are happy at high concentration in high saline media. This is regarding its colloidal stability, but NPs also suffer chemical and biological transformations as those of dissolution, corrosion, oxidation, or those corresponding with interactions with the immune system and phagocytosis. This is because inorganic NPs are normally unstable, that is why they are so active and interesting… such a high electronic density in the size of a protein! To illustrate that, look at a simple consequence of size: nanocarriers can strongly contribute to modifications in pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of the carrier drugs, by leading them through different pathways depending on the morphological, physical and chemical properties of the nanocarrier, which is especially appealing in the case of very toxic drugs. Inside the body, pores smaller than 1 nm have been only reported in the tight junctions on certain continuous capillaries (including the central nervous system, i.e., blood-brain barrier, placenta and testis barrier) while continuous capillaries (muscle, lung, skin) have pores of 6 nm. Fenestrated capillaries (kidney, intestine, some endocrine and exocrine glands) have pores up to 50–60 nm, usually closed by a diaphragm. Finally, discontinuous capillaries (liver, spleen, bone marrow) have pores between 100–1000 nm, which allow the passage of macromolecules between plasma and interstitium. Thus, small molecules (below 6 nm, the majority of drugs) leak in and out from the blood vessels and are rapidly (in minutes) cleared from blood via the kidneys while the passive transport of macromolecules through these porous is negligible. Thus a NP sized between 6–40 nm may follow protein paths to finally accumulate in organs of the mononuclear phagocyte system, especially the liver and spleen, as do proteins and protein aggregates, while larger sizes of NP are easily recognized by the immune system and also end up in liver and spleen but within a shorter time, all in all offering different paths to nanoparticles to tour. It is worth noting here that blood vessel permeability changes in diseases such as inflammation and cancer. All this aspects refer to morphological and intrinsic properties designed at the synthesis time to carefully choose composition, shape and size.

After the success of Nanosafe 2008 and Nanosafe 2010, the 3rd. edition Nanosafe 2012 was held from November 13 to 15, 2012, in Minatec, Grenoble, France. This conference is organized as part of the NANOSAFE project, an EU-FP7 project focused on the potential impact of nanomaterials on human health and the environment.

Our group participated with four talks and their corresponding conference proceedings; we also co-authored a fifth article presented by our collaborators at LEITAT:

• Talk Exploring release and recovery of nanoparticles from polymer nanocomposites using commercial polyamide-based nanocomposites by Martí Busquets, on November 13, at 18:00. Publication: Busquets-Fité, M., Fernandez, E., Janer, G., Vilar, G., Vázquez-Campos, S., Zanasca, R., et al. (2013). Exploring release and recovery of nanomaterials from commercial polymeric nanocomposites. J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 429, 012048.
• Talk Characterizing nanoparticles reactivity: structure-Photocatalytic activity by Jordi Piella, on November 15, at 13:45. Publication: Piella, J., Bastús, N. G., Casals, E., & Puntes, V. (2013). Characterizing Nanoparticles Reactivity: Structure-Photocatalytic Activity Relationship. J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 429, 012040.
• Talk Colloidaly stable, polymer encapsulated quantum dots for biological applications by Isaac Ojea-Jiménez, on November 13, at 17:45. Publication: Ojea-Jiménez, I., Piella, J., Nguyen, T. – L., Bestetti, A., Ryan, A. D., & Puntes, V. (2013). Stability of polymer encapsulated quantum dots in cell culture media. J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 429, 012009.
• Talk The social context of nanotechnology and Regulating its uncertainty: a nanotechnologist approach by Vincent Jamier, on November 15, at 11:30. Publication: Jamier, V., Gispert, I., & Puntes, V. (2013). The social context of nanotechnology and regulating its uncertainty: A nanotechnologist approach. J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 429, 012059.
• Talk Monitoring migration and transformation of nanomaterials in polymeric composites during climatic aging by Gemma Vilar, on November 15, at 11:30. Publication: Vilar, G., Fernández-Rosas, E., Puntes, V., Jamier, V., Aubouy, L., & Vázquez-Campos, S. (2013). Monitoring migration and transformation of nanomaterials in polymeric composites during accelerated aging. J. Phys.: Conf. Ser., 429, 012044.

Conference website and program: http://www.nanosafe.org/scripts/home/publigen/content/templates/show.asp?P=124&L=EN&SYNC=Y

[Download conference program]

The talk will take place at IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona. More information can be found at: http://www.ibecbarcelona.eu/

Below follows the abstract of Víctor’s talk.

The last decade has seen the study of the properties of inogranic nanoparticles flourishing. Nanoparticles display properties that are strongly determined by both morphology and environment and in the physico-chemical context where they are immersed. As an example, note that the optical properties of gold or the magnetic properties of iron oxide at the nanoscale are modified depending on the environment without mediating any chemical reaction. Inorganic nanoparticles behave as “artificial atoms”, since their high density of electronic states -which controls many physical properties- can be extensively and easily tuned by adjusting composition, size and shape. After intense explorative research into the preparation of materials with new properties, and search of application of those novel found materials, now is time for re-designing nanoparticles properties, and in today’s context, including safety from the earlier stages of design, including both, the synthesis of the material and the application of it, as much as its fate, recycling and disposal. I would like to show results of our laboratory trying to design the nanomaterial and its application (for medicine and environmental remediation) employing the new tools for manipulation and characterization recently developed by nanotechnology.

Our participation in the exhibition included:

• The preparation of exhibition materials and devices using nanoparticles and explaining their features.
• The design of experiments and preparation of materials for the educational activities on Nanotechnology carried out by CosmoCaixa: hands-on experiments for high school students and lab exhibitions for the general public.
• Dissemination talks by Prof. Víctor Puntes:

Discovering the nanoworld – October 17, 19h CosmoCaixa Barcelona

Who are we? Where we come from? Where we go to? – November 14, 19.30h, CaixaForum Palma

Discovering the nanoworld – December 4, 19.30h, CosmoCaixa Madrid

Enjoy!

The talk will take place at the Salón de Actos del CIDF (Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Farmacéutico, Ferrer International), located in Joan de Sada, 32,08028 Barcelona.

The event took place at the Planetarium of Pamplona open to the general public, on November 12, 2009, at 19:30.

UPNA Press Release (in Spanish): http://www.unavarra.es/actualidad/noticias?pagina=4&contentId=119494

Full program from the Planetarium of Pamplona (in Spanish): http://www.pamplonetario.org/index.php?view=article&catid=9:actividades&id=129:2009-act

Video recording of the talk: http://youtu.be/kSnfYiH4l4E