The CHIRAL-PRO project coordinated by the Ikerbasque Professor from CIC biomaGUNE Luis Liz Marzán has received one of the prestigious Synergy Grants from the European Research Council (ERC), which aims to finance very ambitious and high-risk research projects that involve research groups from different disciplines and from different countries. The project, funded with 9,272,460 euros, will be carried out by the BioNanoPlasmonics group of CIC biomaGUNE and the Biomimetic Materials group of CINBIO (University of Vigo), both led by Professor Liz Marzán, Professor Sara Bal's group from the University of Antwerp and the group of Professor Nicholas A. Kotov from the University of Michigan, with whom he has maintained an extensive collaboration.
This project supports the broad international recognition of Luis Liz Marzán as a pioneer in nanoscience, especially in the synthesis and application of plasmonic nanoparticles. Liz Marzán has obtained, prior to this ERC-SyG, two other consecutive ERC Advanced Grants and two other Proof of Concept Grants, which practically represents continuous financing from the ERC for 20 years.
“It is a recognition of the prestige of the research teams that I have directed at CIC biomaGUNE and at the University of Vigo,” says the professor, who is very happy to continue working with his partners in Antwerp and Michigan, “with whom I have been collaborating for a long time and with whom we have the possibility of obtaining results with a very great scientific and social impact.”
From intuition to prediction
Professor Liz Marzán has extensive experience in the synthesis of nanoparticles (with dimensions of millionths of a millimeter); “Through chemical reactions we can control their geometries in great detail and we have managed to obtain various shapes and sizes. Although the mechanisms that cause a nanoparticle to grow like a sphere, elongated like a stick, or in the shape of a triangle have been searched for a long time, knowledge of the mechanisms is still limited.
The main objective of CHIRAL-PRO will be to develop a methodology to design nanoparticles with a specifically defined geometry to bind selectively and robustly with proteins and with fibers formed by proteins of nanometric dimensions. “We hope to offer the scientific community a tool to manufacture nanoparticles on demand,” says project coordinator Liz Marzán, “and to be able to move from intuitive synthesis (as has been done until now) to predictive synthesis supported by predictions based on artificial intelligence". Likewise, the project seeks to demonstrate different applications of these new nanomaterials and their selective binding to proteins in fields such as biosensors, biomedicine and even telecommunications, since "artificially manufactured materials can be obtained with properties that we do not know today." .
Chiral nanoparticles with exceptional optical properties
The novelty of the project lies in the fact that “we are going to include a geometric property called chirality,” explains the professor. This is the property of objects that cannot be superimposed with their mirror image. Let's use the example of hands to explain this property: one hand is the mirror image of the other; but if you place one hand on top of the other (not in a position to join the palms, but overlapping) the fingers do not coincide. The same thing happens in many organic molecules and biomolecules. The structure of these molecules is the same, but they are rotated with respect to each other." The importance of chirality can be explained by remembering the case of thalidomide (a drug that was prescribed in the middle of the last century to relieve morning sickness): one of the chiral forms of thalidomide is beneficial, but the same structure turned towards the other hand, it causes very serious damage to fetuses.
Chirality can be exploited to look for strong bonds between complementary objects (like a handshake). This concept has recently been taken to the nanometric scale and nanomaterials with extraordinary properties are being obtained. “In this project we will use artificial intelligence techniques to predict and obtain strong and selective bonds between the chiral structure of our nanoparticles and the corresponding one in biomolecules. Using the special optical properties of these nanoparticles, we will be able to achieve selective biodetection and the manufacture of more efficient devices,” explains the professor.
To achieve this ambitious objective, the complementary (synergistic) experience of the three partners involved will be essential. The laboratories of CIC biomaGUNE and the University of Vigo directed by Liz Marzán will mainly focus on the synthesis and understanding the growth mechanisms of nanoparticles. The laboratory at the University of Antwerp, directed by Bals, will focus on “the development of electron tomography techniques that allow the structure of nanoparticles to be identified very quickly in three dimensions, and even to observe on a real scale how the nanoparticles come together” to proteins in a liquid medium". The group led by Kotov at the University of Michigan, for its part, “has extensive experience in the application of artificial intelligence to predict interactions between nanoparticles and biomolecules.”
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