LIGHT2NANOGENE

Cellular bioengineering by plasmonic enhanced laser nanosurgery

Coordinatore	THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS    more  Organization address address: NORTH STREET 66 COLLEGE GATE city: ST ANDREWS FIFE postcode: KY16 9AJ contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Trish Cognome: Starrs Email: send email Telefono: +44 1334 467286 Fax: +44 1334 462217
Nazionalità Coordinatore	United Kingdom [UK]
Totale costo	283˙489 €
EC contributo	283˙489 €
Programma	FP7-PEOPLE Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)
Code Call	FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF
Funding Scheme	MC-IOF
Anno di inizio	2014
Periodo (anno-mese-giorno)	2014-04-01   -   2017-03-31

 Partecipanti

#	participant	country	role	EC contrib. [€]
1	THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS  Organization address address: NORTH STREET 66 COLLEGE GATE city: ST ANDREWS FIFE postcode: KY16 9AJ contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Trish Cognome: Starrs Email: send email Telefono: +44 1334 467286 Fax: +44 1334 462217	UK (ST ANDREWS FIFE)	coordinator	283˙489.20

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The use of nanoscience technologies to either perform therapy or diagnosis at the cellular level is expected to revolutionize 21st Century medicine by opening new approaches to cure various illnesses. However, cellular bioengineering is technologically challenging and becomes feasible only when different scientific disciplines are combined together to provide advanced cellular level surgery tools. To this aim, nanosurgery (i.e., surgery on the nanoscale) employs ultrafast laser technology and/or nanoscience emerging technologies (nanophotonics, nano-engineering, plasmonics etc.) to perform cell or even nucleus surgery. The major advantage of the nanosurgery approach is the prospect to disrupt submicrometer-sized organelles within living cells or tissue without affecting the surrounding material or compromising viability of the cell or organism. In this context, we intend to apply and optimize a novel femtosecond laser technique for nanosurgery of cancer cells. The technique, named plasmonic enhanced laser nanosurgery, combines the advantages of two rapidly expanding research and technological fields, namely plasmonics and ultrafast lasers, to build a versatile tool capable of performing high throughput cell nanosurgery. The main innovative goal of the proposal involves optical fiber integration of the plasmonic nanosurgery tool towards in-vivo (i.e. living subject) applications. In-vitro cell transfection (i.e., introduction of siRNA through the membrane of breast cancer stem cells (CSCs)) is the specific nanosurgery application of the Light2NanoGene project. The latter, is driven by the remarkable ability of these undifferentiated cells within a tumor to self-renew and promote metastases. The successful transfection of the CSCs with siRNA will silence the expression of key genes involved in their aggressive behavior. We expect proof-of-concept elimination of their capacity for self-regeneration and induction of metastases.'