NANOTECHNOLOGY IN BIOMEDICINE - 2.3.2018 - Abstract prof. Sánchez

Prof. Rosario M. Sánchez-Martín
UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA - Department of Medicinal and Organic Chemistry - Centre for Genomics and Oncological Research (GENYO)
Principal investigator of research group NANOCHEMBIO

Rosario M. Sánchez Martín has developed her research career between the UK and Spain. For the past 15 years she has been working in the area of nanotechnology in biomedicine. She has developed a variety of nanotechnologies to allow the efficient delivery of a wide range of cargos into cells for a number of in vitro and in vivo applications. Nowadays, Dr. Rosario M. Sánchez-Martín leads the research team NanoChemBio of the University of Granada in Spain. She is a world leader in the field of nanoparticles and their biological applications and Lecturer in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Granada. She finished her PhD at the University of Granada in 2002. She spent 9 years in the UK, firstly as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southampton and later, in 2006, as independent researcher at the University of Edinburgh when she was awarded a prestigious Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship from the Royal Society. In January 2011, she was awarded a Marie Curie CIG reintegration fellowship and she moved to the University of Granada. Since then, she has worked on transferring all her expertise and know-how in designing and developing nanotechnology-based platforms to the University of Granada. In 2013, Dr. Sánchez- Martín has been granted with her own research lab in the Centre for Genomics and Oncological Research (GENYO) integrated by Pfizer - Universidad de Granada - Junta de Andalucía.  Nowadays, her research activity is focused on the development of nanotechnology based platform for diagnosis and therapy (sl.ugr.es/UGRNanoChemBio).

Nanotechnology in biomedicine: reality or fiction?
Abstract:
Despite rapid advances in the molecular profiling of cancer and its targeted therapy, the lack of sensitive and affordable assays for early diagnosis of aggressive primary cancer and recurrence is the most important obstacle to curbing mortality by cancer. Our lab is focussed in the design of nanodevices for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Our research team has designed several strategies to conjugate efficiently therapeutics and diagnostic cargoes to engineered nanoparticles (NPs). Relevant cargoes such as proteins, oligonucleotides, both DNA and RNA, peptides, drugs, sensors and fluorophores have been conjugated to them and successfully delivery inside cells. Furthermore, by gene expression and proteomic profiling studies, was shown that nanospheres did not induce significant alteration of nanofected cells. Recently we have developed a method to determine the doses of NPs in a reproducible and reliable manner.
In the field of biomedicine, nanotechnology has raised a growing interest, as it promises to solve the drawbacks associated with conventional therapeutic agents. After several decades of technological advances, drug delivery systems based on multifunctional nanoparticles have emerged as a great promise.
This presentation will describe nanotechnology based therapies against cancer that are currently in clinical use and in clinical trials and the contribution of our team NANOCHEMBIO to this area of research. Herein our more recent developments in the design of multifunctional nanoplatforms for cancer therapy and diagnosis will be presented.