Delivery of functional macromolecules, such as therapeutic nucleic acids, into cells requires overcoming the cell membrane. Photoporation is a recently developed technology that allows to transiently permeabilize the cell membrane through a combination of
Peptide Hydrogels are swollen networks of self-assembled peptide nanofibers that contain large
amounts of water. An important characteristic of such hydrogels is that they can be aspirated and
injected through a standard needle. Recently, we developed such peptide hydrogels that extended
the pain killing effect of morphine form several hours up to 3-4 days. However, further extension of
the sustained release time is ...
Delivering compounds into cells is a ubiquitous requirement for fundamental life science research
and cell-based clinical applications. Since cells are protected from the outside world by their plasma
membrane, it requires sophisticated technology to deliver compounds across this barrier without
causing toxicity. Photoporation is emerging as a powerful technology to achieve exactly this. It relies
on laser illumination of ...
The high attrition rate in drug development is a major issue for the pharmaceutical industry. Of particular concern is the high failure rate in clinical phase 2 and 3. At this point, failure is disastrous from an economic point of view, leading to an outrageous general cost to bring a compound to the market. Providing predictive in vitro tests in a preclinical stage is generally acknowledged to lower the chances of failure in clinical phases. ...
Natural product-inspired drug design is a key and time-tested strategy in the development of new medicines. Nature produces an astounding number of highly complex molecules, each of which has specific functions important for the survival of the producing species. As function follows from structure, the various substructures found in the small molecules produced by living organisms (so-called metabolites) are important leads in the molecular ...
Cells have developed diverse mechanisms to protect themselves from acute damage by environmental stresses, such as nutrient or growth factor deprivation, oxidative stress and DNAdamage. In all these responses, stress-regulated protein kinases and phosphatases are commonly involved. Protein Phosphatase 2A (PP2A) is a major cellular phosphatase with pleiotropic functions, including in stress signaling. Here, we aim to investigate how cellular ...
Conventional cancer treatment, encompassing either radiation, surgery or chemotherapy is insufficient to treat all tumor types. Novel methods are being explored, among which immunotherapy (aimed at activating the immune system to detect and destroy tumor cells) and nanomedicine (the use of nanosized materials (NMs) for the targeted delivery of therapeutics) are receiving great interest. We have demonstrated that by finely tuning NM ...
Cancer remains an important cause of mortality and economic losses worldwide. For an improved cancer therapy, a permanent need for the discovery of new-generation, refined anticancer agents is needed. Exploitation of genuinely novel classes of cancer targets with new mechanisms of action provides great opportunities for the discovery of new anticancer drugs. Targeting the voltage-gated potassium channel hEag1 in cancer is one of the most ...
Venoms from cone snails (genus Conus) can be seen as an untapped cocktail of biologically active compounds, being increasingly recognized as new emerging source of peptide-based therapeutics. Cone snails are considered to be specialized predators that have evolved the most sophisticated peptide chemistry and neuropharmacology for their own biological purposes by producing venoms which contains a structural and functional diversity of ...
The human gut forms a complex ecosystem where the intestinal barrier faces the resident microbiota. This microbiota is involved in maintaining gut homeostasis, occupying luminal and mucosal niches to outcompete pathogenic bacteria, providing a protective biofilm, contributing to the digestion of foods and energy metabolism, and also actively modulating immune processes. Microbe-host crosstalk is hence considered a crucial determinant of human ...