Objective 3

Development of plasmonic nanocontainers for applications in gene and antimicrobial therapy

This objective is focused on the preparation of synthetic systems, which are based on the controlled assembly of organic ensembles, e.g. vesicles and liposomes, or biological species, e.g. viral capsids, with plasmonic gold nanoparticles with optimized optical properties, for their application in cancer gene therapy and antibiotic-resistant infection therapy. These different applications, which are nowadays two of the most important challenges in biomedicine, will be investigated by using a common methodology based on the excitation of the optical and thermal properties of the nanoplasmonic vectors through the irradiation with cw or pulse NIR lasers at the biological tissue window.