Dresden International Graduate School for Interdisciplinary Life Sciences

Our research is focused on two key concepts in nanomedicine and fluorescence-sensing technologies.

Nanomedicine: Within the traditional context of nanomedicine, therapeutics are conjugated to nanoparticles that are selectively targeted towards diseased tissue. The key goal in this regard is to reduce off-target effects, where therapeutics end up in healthy tissues. Whilst substantial progress has been made in better designing nanoparticles for this purpose, there remains significant gaps in our understanding of nano-bio interactions in the first defence frontier of the body: our blood.

Once a nanomaterial touches blood and other biological fluids, a rapid adsorption process of different proteins, lipids, and solutes to the nanoparticle surface occurs. This is termed the biomolecular corona, and the composition of which can flag our circulating immune system to attack the nanoparticle and clear it from circulation, leading to drastically diminished targeting abilities.

Our work approaches this problem on two frontiers. On one side, we look to exert control over the biomolecular corona formation process, so that we adsorb proteins that we want in the biomolecular corona. This allows us to prevent undesirable immune system responses. On the other side, we look to leverage biomaterial nanoparticles that are already inside of us, such that they are not recognised as “foreign” in our blood. This involves taking glycogen nanoparticles from nature, which are sugary polysaccharide nanoparticles, functionalising them for a therapeutic purpose, before re-inserting them into biology to perform a therapeutic function.

Fluorescence-Sensing Technologies: For a thorough understanding of subtle physicochemical processes (e.g., fluctuations in pH, temperature, solutes, etc.), we need to understand not only what is occurring, but where it is occurring. Spatially resolving such processes can allow us to reach more concrete understanding on numerous concepts spanning chemistry, physics and biology.

In our work, we develop new polymeric materials that are capable of sensing physicochemical phenomena in incredibly complex systems. Our work leverages conformational fluorescence between specifically paired fluorophores. We design polymers that either stretch or collapse, reversibly, in the presence/absence of specific stimuli. By coupling specific fluorophores into these polymer chains, we can resolve these conformational transitions by a change in the energy and/or polarisation of the output fluorescence light. These transitions can then be resolved in high spatiotemporal resolution by confocal laser scanning microscopy-based methods. We integrate these concepts into three key systems: 1) free polymer chains in solution or integrated into hybrid matrices, 2) surface-tethered polymer brushes, and 3) soft and squishy polymeric nanoparticles.