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

A new edition of the nanoLCA Workshop: “Health and Environmental Impact of nano-enabled products along the life cycle”, will take place in Barcelona (Spain), May 6-8, organized within the framework of the NanoPolyTox project, in which our group participates.

This time, the workshop counts with two distinctive sections:

• May 6: Training Workshop on Safety issues of nanomaterials along the life cycle (to be held in LEITAT, in the Barcelona area),

• May 7-8: Joint Workshop on Nanosafety: Current status & future perspectives on nanosafety (to be held in the Residència d’Investigadors, in Barcelona city)

The workshop will be co-organized by the coordinators of three European FP7 Projects (NanoPolyTox, NanoSustain and NanoFATE), and the Joint Workshop will feature the advances and contributions from these projects (day 1), together with the contributions of other FP7 nanosafety-related projects (day 1). On the other hand, the Training Workshop is particularly appealing for students and junior researchers in the nanosafety field.

More information and registration: http://www.leitat.org/nanoLCA/

Víctor Puntes, Martí Busquets and Eudald Casals will be participating from our group, and also through our extended work contributions to the NanoPolyTox project.

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.

Several members of our group presented their recent work:

• Eudald Casals, “The inorganic nanoparticle biomolecular corona. Formation, evolution and biological impact”.

• Lorena García, “A simple method for the preparation of cationic gold nanoparticle bioconjugates for cell penetration”.

• Jordi Piella, “Gold nanoparticles as drug delivery agents for cancer therapy”.

• Ngoc Tran, “Size-controlled synthesis and functionalization of large gold nanoparticles”.

• Sofía Rubio, “Synthesis, surface modification and immunological properties of Peptide-conjugated gold nanoparticles”.

Further information can be found here:

http://www.uab.es/servlet/Satellite/first-workshop-on-nanomedicine-uab-cei-1334644996485.html