Project description
Microalgae extracts for chronic ulcer healing
Chronic ulcers demonstrate a reduced capacity to heal by themselves, leading to increased morbidity and mortality. Efforts to improve the healing process focus on preventing infection and minimising inflammation and tissue damage. The EU-funded Dual-NanoMAE project will take advantage of the medical properties of green microalgae extract. Scientists plan to combine these extracts in a new therapeutic lipid nanoparticle for ulcer therapy after validating their safety and healing properties on a 3D skin ulcer model. Their antibacterial action will be tested on a biofilm infected ulcer model based on human cells.
Objective
Chronic ulcers are a major cause of morbidity and mortality with increasing prevalence. Ulcer healing is the ultimate therapeutic goal. Control of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and infection prevention are key factors to minimize inflammation and tissue damage in the healing process. The aim of this work is to take advantage of two remarkable properties of the green microalgae C. zofingiensis - the production of the highly antioxidative astaxanthin and a large amount of antibacterial fatty acids (FA) – and to combine them in a new therapeutic lipid nanoparticle for ulcer therapy (Figure 1). Thereby the project increases the pharmaceutical availability of the hydrophobic drug astaxanthin, circumvents its low bioavaliabality and chemical stability, all limiting its pharmaceutical significance until today. Nanoparticles will be characterized for their physical–chemical properties, cytotoxicity, in vitro proliferation enhancement, and wound healing properties toward normal human cells. Antioxidant activity of Dual-NanoMAE on 2D and 3D cell culture models will be monitored with FLIM-ROX, a sophisticated and sensitive technique developed by Prof. Dr. Ulrike Alexiev. Antimicrobial activity of nanoparticles will be evaluated against two reference biofilm forming bacterial strains, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Finally, the capability of Dual-NanoMAE to promote ulcer healing will be evaluated on a biofilm infected ulcer model based on human cells.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciencessociologydemographymortality
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materials
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
14195 Berlin
Germany