Project description
Cascades of enzymes in materials could provide exquisitely logical control over therapy delivery
Enzymes are nature's catalysts, essentially lowering the energy required for a reaction to occur with a sort of lock-and-key activation mechanism. They are like the gatekeepers to the reaction's progression. Within the last decade, the use of enzymes as logic gates for elementary computing applications has attracted increasing interest. The EU-funded BioMaGic project is exploiting the use of enzymes to incorporate logic gates into therapeutic biomaterials. Biomaterial coatings or 3D constructs created using enzymatically active hydrogel particles will allow the materials to receive and process multiple biochemical signals (inputs) and enable specific therapeutic 'outputs' depending on the combination of inputs. The novel biomaterials with logic-based therapeutic activity will enable exquisitely tailored therapeutic responses depending on multiple biochemical signals in physiological cascades.
Objective
The present proposal takes a novel approach to design biomaterials with enzymatic logic gates. By mimicking enzymatic biocatalytic cascades present in natural tissues, these biomaterials will be able to receive and process multiple biochemical signals, and logically elicit therapeutic outputs in response to specific combinations of input signals. This goal will be realized using enzymatically active hydrogel particles (Specific Objective (SO) 1) as building blocks that will be assembled into biomaterial coatings (SO 2) or three-dimensional constructs (SO 3), which can be applied to surfaces of currently available biomaterials or serve as autonomous implantable biomaterials, respectively. To illustrate the wide applicability of this biomaterial design strategy, two major clinical challenges are selected as target applications, i.e. tissue regeneration and bacterial infection.
The fellowship will harness the existing experience of the researcher in (bio)materials science, and will add a new dimension to this expertise in terms of biochemical signaling and enzymatic reactions. To achieve this goal, the researcher will carry out the outgoing phase of this fellowship at Harvard University, and then return to Eindhoven University of Technology for the incoming phase. The envisioned activities described in the proposal will prepare the researcher to emerge from this fellowship with additional scientific competences and transferable skills, and to establish an expanded international network. The success in this project will introduce a new class of biomaterials with dynamic signaling capabilities to elicit logic-based therapeutic effects, which can impact virtually all fields in which biomaterials are used, contributing to the enhancement of EU healthcare and economic interests. Through BioMaGic, the researcher will initiate an independent line of research as the basis for establishing an academic faculty career at a European research university.
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Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
5612 AE Eindhoven
Netherlands