Description
Francesca Baldelli Bombelli
Laboratory of Supramolecular and BioNano Materials (SupraBioNanoLab),
Department of Chemistry, Material and Chemical Engineering G.Natta, Politecnico di
Milano, Milano, Italy
The fast development of nanotechnology and growing use of nanomaterials in
different fields increased the chance to voluntary or accidental exposure of the
human body to nanoparticles (NPs), which could in some cases lead to adverse
effects for health. Thus, a clear understanding of the interaction of NPs with the
biological matter is crucial and not only limited to nanomaterials specifically
developed for biomedical applications. Most of the difficulties encountered by the
nanoformulations to reach the clinics are not only due to issues related to the
scaling-up of the production methodologies, but also to the complexity of the
interaction between NPs and biological matter. The first contact between NPs and
living organisms occurs in the biological fluid, where protein-NP complexes are
immediately formed, then these protein corona (PC) NPs will first interact with the
cell membrane. Thus, understanding PC NP–cell interactions is a critical step to
design safer and more efficient NPs as well as to predict possible toxicity effects. In
this work the use of neutrons to study the formation of PC NPs and their effect on
lipid membranes will be shown: in particular how neutron-based techniques can
represent optimal complementary methodologies to better understand the interaction
of nanomaterials and biological matter.
Primary author
Prof.
Francesca Baldelli Bombelli
(Politecnico di Milano)
