Prof. Nicola Daldosso, Department of Engineering for Innovation Medicine, University of Verona, Italy, to speak at ECE-NTUA on October 14, 2024 at 14:00


Abstract: Porous silicon (pSi) is an ideal traceable carrier for both therapy and diagnostics purposes thanks to its unique properties: visible photoluminescence at room temperature, large surface-to-volume ratio and large porosity, together with biodegradability, biocompatibility and absence of immunogenicity and toxicity. Along the last years, we contributed to the overcoming of its optical and structural degradation in aqueous media by developing organic and inorganic coatings. Moreover, from the therapy point of view, we achieved interesting results by coupling the pSi particles with different anticancer and immunotherapeutic molecules (i.e., doxorubicin, docetaxel and Pam3CSK4). The treatment of selected cancer cell lines resulted in an anti-proliferative effect when the delivery of the chemotherapeutics drugs was mediated by pSi. While the incubation of human-derived dendritic cells with our drug delivery system loaded with an immunologic adjuvant allowed to obtain an enhancement of the immune response thanks to a delayed internalization due to the release enabled by pSi. From the diagnostics point of view, both the intrinsic optical and the combined magnetic properties (thanks to the inclusion of magnetic nano particles) have been used to demonstrate the feasibility of multimodal diagnostic system.

Biography: Nicola Daldosso graduated in Physics at the University of Trento in 1997. He received the Ph.D. degree in Physics of Matter at Université J. Fourier of Grenoble, France, in 2001. From 2012, he is at University of Verona, first as researcher and then as professor, now leading the Fluorescence and Raman laboratory. His main research interests include the study of the structural, optical and electronic properties of optically active materials, mainly nanostructured materials for integrated optics and micro-photonic devices. In the last years, the focus of his research has moved to the chemical/physical functionalization of nano-systems (nano-particles and micro/nano porous materials) and their use in drug delivery and sensing applications (NanoMedicine). Other research projects concern the structural characterization and modelling of glass and ceramic materials. He is author of more than 100 papers, co-author of 8 chapter books/books, holds 2 patents. He has h-index 29 and has been invited at about 30 international conferences.