Cargo-towing Highly enantioselective Electro-pumps: unconventional asymmetrIc Readout and transmission of chiral information

Descripción del proyecto

Electrobombas de arrastre que transmiten información quiral para la administración selectiva de fármacos

La naturaleza se basa en la «lateralidad», una propiedad llamada quiralidad en la que las moléculas existen como imágenes especulares, como nuestras manos izquierda y derecha. Esta distinción es vital para saber cómo interactúan los medicamentos con nuestro organismo. El proyecto CHEIR, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, está transformando este concepto fundamental en una herramienta revolucionaria: bombas microscópicas «remolcadoras de carga» integradas en sistemas microfluídicos. El proyecto diseñará dichos dispositivos a partir de polímeros conductores inteligentes y utilizará campos eléctricos y magnéticos para transportar cargas con extrema precisión dentro de minúsculos canales fluídicos. El equipo de CHEIR es pionero en el futuro del diagnóstico ultrarrápido y las terapias selectivas gracias al dominio de la transmisión de información molecular a nanoescala.

Objetivo

Chirality is found throughout nature, but it occupies a special place in chemistry, perhaps for historical reasons, but mainly as a result of the beneficial properties of chiral molecules across a diverse range of areas, from medicine to materials science. The global aim of CHEIR is to achieve with unprecedented efficiency the propagation of chiral information along different length scales, based on the synergy of well-chosen molecular ingredients and physicochemical engineering. The artificial systems here involved can be considered as models for the transmission of chiral information through space. Such ambitious aim could be achieved developing a cargo-towing electro-pump based on chiral conducting polymers for targeted drug-delivery applications. The combination of four main ingredients, electric field and magnetic field (externally applied), electrical conductivity and enantiodiscrimination capability (intrinsic features of the object), makes these innovative miniaturized bipolar soft pumps perfect candidates for a multipurpose asymmetric detection. In such scenario inherent chirality can provide the breakthrough. It implies chirality and key functional properties to originate from the same structural element endowing the selector with extraordinary chirality manifestations that can be propagated from molecular level to the macroscopic one. Unprecedented recognition, in terms of energy differences, was recently observed, implementing inherently chiral materials as enantiopure electrode surfaces. Recently, attractive potentialities of these systems were also exploited in the field of bipolar electrochemistry and in the one of autonomous swimmers allowing to correlate the output signal with the concentration of the enantiomers present in solution. Such striking performance will prepare for the development of innovative systems with high impact in analytical, biological and pharmaceutical fields considering the project interdisciplinarity.