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Project leader Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček and PhD student Rinea Barbir participated in the first COST CA17140 Nano2Clinic Training School, held in Trieste from 8th to 11th April 2019.

The training included various interesting and instructive lectures and workshops encompassing all areas of nanomedicine. Dr Vinković Vrček held a lecture titled “Safe-by-design approach to foster clinical translation of nano-enabled medical products”,in which she invited the scientific community to consider nanomaterial safety instead of focusing solely on efficacy. Rinea Barbir presented her research with a poster titled “Biocompatibility evaluation of selenium nanoparticles as promising delivery nanosystems“.

In collaboration with Dr Vinković Vrček, Dr Atiđa selmani presented her poster “Stability of selenium nanoparticles as novel anticancer delivery vehicle in
relevant biological media”.

More information is available by following the links.

As a part of the COST Action AMiCI, from March 7th to 8th 2019, a Workshop for Early Career Investigators and Short Term Scientific Missions was held in Riga, Latvia.

Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček and PhD student Krunoslav Ilić participated with presentations. Dr Vinković Vrček held a lecture titled “Obstacles and opportunities on development for antimicrobial coatings as a scientist”, while Krunoslav Ilić presented the results of his Short Term Scientific Mission that took place in Tallin, Estonia last year (more).

Collaborators Sonja Hartl and Carolin Tetyczka, PhD students from the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics, University of Graz, are visiting the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health from 18th to 22nd of February 2019.

During their research visit they will be conducting cell experiments to study the toxic effect of nanosilver and nanoselenium, according to the work plan of the Croatian – Austrian bilateral project “Pharmacokinetic profiling of silver nanoparticles: the role of biological barriers – NanoPasS“.

As a part of the COST Action CA17140 Nano2Clinic, PhD student Barbara Pem was awarded a scholarship for a Short Term Scientific Mission at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK.

Under the supervision of Prof Andrew Adamatzky, Barbara Pem will be working on the development of computational models for describing and predicting the behaviour of nanoparticles coated with functional molecules. These models will be used for the investigation of the interactions of functionalised nanoparticles with biological systems, as a part of the NanoFaceS workplan. The STSM will take place from February 18th to April 14th 2019.

As a part of the COST Action CA17140 Nano2Clinic, PhD student Rinea Barbir was awarded a scholarship for a Short Term Scientific Mission at Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragon in Zaragoza, Spain.

Under the supervision of ProfJesus Martinez de la Fuente, Rinea Barbir will conduct physico-chemical experiments to investigate the interactins of silver nanoparticles with model proteins. These experiments are in accordance with the work plan of the NanoFaceS project and will form a part of Rinea Barbir’s doctoral thesis. The STSM will take place from February 18th to April 14th 2019.

On  December 12th 2018 in the Croatian Department of Transfusion Medicine, Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček held a lecture entitled: “Safety of nanomaterials in biomedicine”.

She presented recent advances and concerns in nanotoxicology to the audience of Croatian health professionals.

As a part of German-Croatian bilateral project “Multiplexed characterization platform for nano-bio interface”, project collaborator Rinea Barbir spent three weeks, from 26^th November to 18^th December, with Nanobiophotonic group led by Prof Dr Wolfgang Frizsche at Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz-IPHT) Jena, Germany. She used localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) and UV-VIS spectroscopy to study formation of protein corona. With UV-VIS method, she proved the existence of peak shift in silver nanoparticles spectra after interaction with proteins, which is necessary for further LSPR measurements. Using LSPR she was able to monitor in real time adsorption of model proteins BSA, human transferrin (glycosylated)  and transferrin from rice (non-glycosylated) with 80nm spherical gold nanoparticles.

Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček,the leader of the NanoFaceS project, was awarded the yearly award of the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health for the highest number of original scientific papers published in the previous year in the journals indexed in the Web of Science database.

Every year , the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health awards its employees for the best scientific papers published in the year before. The purpose of yearly awards is to recognize hard work and notable achievements in the competitive and demanding environment of the domestic and international scientific community. It serves to motivate all scientists to strive for even greater accomplishments in the years to follow. This award confirms the scientific excellence of Dr Vinković Vrček and the success of her project NanoFaceS.

The award ceremony was held on December 7th 2018 in the Old City Hall in Zagreb.

From 26th to 30th of November 2018, a project meeting was held to plan further activities for the bilateral Croatian – German project “Multiplex characterization platform for nano-bio interface”.Project leader Dr Ivana Vinković Vrček visited te Leibniz-IPHT in Jena, Germany, where she and co-leader Prof Wolfgang Fritzche arranged the plan to conduct further project activities.

On 21.11.2018. a small educational event Science Talks took place at the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health, where young researchers got the opportunity to present a part of their research in the form of a 10-minute presentation.

Project collaborators Barbara Pem and Krunoslav Ilić presented the results of their research from the NanoFaceS project. PhD student Pem held a lecture titled: Interferencije optički aktivnih nanočestica s in vitro testovima toksičnosti”, presenting a recently published work on the interferences of metallic nanoparticles with in vitro toxicity tests. PhD student Ilić, in his presentation “Interakcije nanočestica s biološkim sustavima i njihov potencijal u biomedicini”, gave an overview of the state-of-the-art research on nanoparticles for biomedical applications and their impact on the organism.

More about the event can be found by following the links: event description and programme