NanoFUNC SIGNED

Project "NanoFUNC" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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Map

 Project objective

Nanotechnologies have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of devastating diseases such as cancer or neuropathologies. By combining light-emitting nanoparticles (NPs) and super-resolution imaging, it is possible to observe living tissues at the molecular scale, resulting in images of unprecedented detail. To this aim, the ideal NP should be bright, stable, small, spectrally relevant, versatile, targetable, and non-toxic. These features have been sought after by chemists, physicists and biologists alike for more than a decade but their presence in a single NP has not been achieved to date. The objective of the NanoFUNC project is thus to develop the next generation of NPs displaying all the above properties. We propose to achieve this by conferring targeting properties to the latest all organic NPs of the host laboratory already displaying promising spectral characteristics. We will first validate the functionalisation of these new tools on model cellular systems before applying them to track neurotransmitter receptors deep in intact brain slices of healthy and schizophrenia rat models. We expect this project to impact all communities benefiting from advances in bioimaging including neuroscience, medicine and cell biology as a whole. We thus envisage to patent the obtained NPs for use in marketable bioimaging applications. The transfer of knowledge between the expertise of the host in nanochemistry and that of the experienced researcher in neurobiology provides a unique opportunity to successfully complete this highly interdisciplinary project. Moreover, the mobility of the researcher back to France in an internationally renowned laboratory is sure to enhance her career prospects as she aims to become an independent researcher in the near future. Together, the host and the researcher will strive for excellent scientific results and build a career plan involving training, management and communication to bring the researcher to full professional maturity.