News

The first conference of the COST Action CA17140 Nano2Clinic (Cancer nanomedicine: from the bench to the bedside) was held from 15th to 17th October 2019 in Riga, Latvia. The Conference gathered leading experts in nanomedicine from all over the world to discuss the latest breakthroughs in

Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček, as the workpackage 2 leader, was the chair of one of the lecture sessions. PhD student Barbara Pem held a short talk titled: “Effect of particle shape and size on the interactions of gold nanoparticles with proteins of different glycosylation status”, which can be found on the following link.

PhD candidate Rafael Ramírez Jiménez from the ICMA – Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón, Zaragoza, Spain spent one month, from September 14 2019 to October 14 2019, at the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health for his Short Term Scientific Mission application within the COST Action CA17140 NANO2CLINIC.

His STSM project was focused on understanding of the mechanism of action of nano-enabled medical agents, their enhanced biocompatibility and safety. He was trained in the Safe-by-Design approach to development of nano-enabled drug delivery system for anticancer therapy. At the same time, the NanoFaceS group benefited from his experience in the design and synthesis of nano-drug delivery agents. The mission provided the know-how necessary to provide further insight into specific aspects of medical applications of nanomaterials, in particularly for anticancer therapy by utilizing more efficient and safer-by-design nanomaterials.

From October 10th to 11th 2019 in Zagreb, the symposium of the Humboldt College Zagreb was held in the honor of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Alexander von Humboldt.

Named: “Science and educational challenges facing Europe in the next decade”, the symposium was organized with the aim of uniting scientists from different fields, from Croatia and Europe, to encourage the exchange of knowledge, foster interdisciplinary collaboration and direct the attention of the scientific community towards finding solutions to the obstacles in the way of scientific progress.

PhD student Barbara Pem presented the NanoFaceS project to the international audience with the poster: “Challenges and obstacles to study nano-bio interface”.

The poster is available here.

The one-day expert meeting “A scientific perspective on microplastics in nature and society” was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia  on October 4th 2019, organised by Slovenian Engineering Academy, SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) and University of Ljubljana.

The meeting included an expert panel, in which Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček was an invited guest.  She discussed the safety and risk assessment of micro and nanoplastic materials.

From 11th to 13th of September 2019, 12th International Particle Toxicology Conference was held in Salzburg, Austria, with the aim of bringing together toxicology experts from all over the world to discuss safety, applications and research of particle toxicology.

Project collaborator Rinea Barbir participated with a poster presentation titled: “Sex-related in vivo response to silver nanoparticles after subacute oral exposure“, where she presented her research on the difference in toxicity of nanoparticles towards male and female mice after three weeks of exposure.

Doctoral candidate Emerik Galić also presented his results on nanoparticle toxicity in vitro with the poster titled “Genotoxocity of silver and selenium nanoparticles on human epithelial cells“.The study was conducted by the NanoFaceS group in collaboration with the groups from Universities of Osijek and Graz.

Project leader Dr Vinković Vrček was an invited lecturer on the 17th International Congress on Photobiology and 18th Congress of the European Society for Photobiology, held in Barcelona, Spain from August 25th to 30th 2019. In her lecture titled: “Biocompatibility assessment of up- and down-converting nanoparticles: implications of interferences with in vitro assays”, she presented the results of a recently published paper on the issues arising from nanoparticle interferences with the commonly used in vitro toxicity assays.

The link to the book of abstracts can be found here.

As a part of the Croatian-German bilateral project “Multiplex characterization platform for nano-bio interface”, NanoFaceS collaborator Krunoslav Ilić visited the Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technology (Leibniz-IPHT) in Jena, Germany from July 1st to 26th 2019. Under the supervision of Prof Wolfgang Frizsche, he worked on the examination of protein adsorption to the nanoparticle surface by the localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) method, thereby continuing and further developing the previous experiments borne out of the Croatian-German collaboration.

Project collaborator Barbara Pem stayed as a guest researcher at the Institute of Occupational Medicine, Edinburgh, UK from April 15th to July 5th 2019. She was conducting a project “Interaction of metallic nanoparticles with biothiols – experimental vs. molecular dynamics approach” under the supervision of Prof Lang Tran.

The project combined the theoretical and experimental approach to the research of the nano-bio interface. It involved the study of the binding of biothiols and proteins to the surface of metallic nanoparticles and the impact of molecular corona on the oxidative activity of nanoparticles in vitro, while the complementary simulations were conducted in silico. The three-month reseacrh visit was funded by British Scholarship Trust.

On May 15th 2019, project collaborator Ivona Capjak (Mr. Pharm.) defended her doctoral thesis titled “Effect of size, shape and surface structure of silver nanoparticles on their interaction with model proteins”.

The thesis was made at the Institute of Medical Research and Occupational Health under the supervision of Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček, and the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb with co-supervision of Dr Snadra Šupraha Goreta.

The results presented in the thesis are a significant contribution to the field of safe and effective nanomedicine, and will advance the knowledge of nano-bio interactions, facilitate the design of save and effective nanomaterials and enable the assembly of guidelines necessary for regulation and approval of novel nanomedical systems. With that in regard, the comission consisting of: Dr. Tin Weitner (Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry), Dr Jasna Jablan (Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry) and Dr Maja Dotour Sikirić (Rudjer Boskovic Institute) assigned the thesis the honorific magna cum laude (with great honor).

From 15th to 17th of April, members of the NanoFaces group – Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček, Dr Ivan Pavičić and Krunoslav Ilić – attended 10th BioNanoMed Conference in Graz, Austria.Dr Vinković Vrček held a lecture titled “Sex-related in vivo Response to Metallic Nanoparticles “, and Dr Pavičić and Krunoslav Ilić presented results from the collaboration with Karl Franzens University in Graz in form of two posters: “Biocompatibility assessment of selenium nanoparticles as novel biocidal nanomaterial” and “Interaction of silver nanoparticles with biological barriers“. More information can be found by following the links.