Prof. Alonso's team has developed core-shell nanostructures to confront mucosal barriers (image below). Some of these nanostructures are able to diffuse accross mucus barriers and penetrate into cells (image left)

Prof. Benoit's group has developed new nano-cargos, the lipid Nanocapsules with sizes below the endothelium fenestration ( < 100 nm), that are prepared to encapsulate efficiently lipophilic drugs, offering a pharmaceutical solution for their oral administration

Professor O’Driscoll’s group have developed functionalised cyclodextrin-based nanoparticles for siRNA delivery which have achieved gene silencing of TNF-alpha in a murine model of acute colitis. This work, McCarthy et al., has been accepted for publication in the J Cont Release, 2013.

SmPill® is an innovative drug delivery technology developed at Sigmoid Pharma. It addresses in an integrative manner the issues formulators face when dealing with small molecules and biologics.

Sigmoid is utilising SmPill to create novel therapeutics designed to address unmet clinical needs in a range of diseases as well as enabling oral vaccine and peptide delivery.

Understanding the mechanism of nanoparticle delivery in the gut is key to creating optimised delivery systems. Dr. Schatzlein's group has used confocal microscopy and CARS to study interaction of nanoparticles with the mucus and enterocyte transcytosis. The image shows intestinal villi and enterocytes (green) are in close contact to mucus (blue). The nanoparticles are imaged without fluorescent label using CARS (red).

The fate of biodegradable flourescein- loaded PLG microparticles in microvilli taken from a rat  following intestinal instillations can be observed in the following flourescence microscopy image taken by Prof. Brayden's group. This paper has been cited 133 times (Web of Science).  McClean, S.  et al. (1998). Binding and uptake of biodegradable poly-DL-lactide  micro-  and nanoparticles in intestinal epithelia.  Eur. J. Pharm. Sci. 6, 153-163. 

Uppsala Universitiy will start its activity in the second half of 2013.

The picture shows nanoparticle transport across the intestinal epithelium from an earlier project.

Dr. Mabondzo's group will use a metabolomic approach to build metabolomic maps pointing out the putative dysfuntions occurring during the interactions between epithelial cells and nanocarriers.

The  main focus of Veneto Nanotech-ECSIN is to study the impact of engineered nanomaterials on human health and environment. In this context, cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, as well as fluorescent confocal and electron microscopy techniques are employed to unveil the interaction and effect of nanoparticles exposure to cells.