Opus 25

One of the biggest issues of current situation is that despite substantial money and time invested in research, the progress in the field is still relatively slow, since most of the research focuses on developing brand new sophisticated nanomaterials overlooking the key aspect with is the proof of concept from the biological point of view. Our idea for improving this situation is to develop universal delivery platform for nanomedicines design, which can be adjusted to the particular need (i.e., given malignancy or mode of action- treatment or diagnosis) in a simple and robust way. Based on the generic functionalization protocols we will be able to combine our nanosystem with various drugs or therapeutic/diagnostic radioisotopes and target it to various malignancies, such as, for instance, melanoma. Our platform will be based on a functional biopolymer nanogels synthesized in sustainable and environmentally friendly process. This in turn tackles another challenge we are facing – synthesis of perfect nanomaterial needs to be simple and clean. This will be achieved in our project by use of ionizing radiation from electron accelerator. We have developed and intensively researched the unique one-step electron beam process, which we will further explore in this project. Using radiation makes possible to carry out the synthetic reactions in water and without harmful chemicals, which are usually difficult to remove and can easily contaminate ready product. Hereby we are simplifying the process, making it cleaner, faster, less labor-intensive and a result cheaper and more sustainable.