2020
Congratulations to Marie and Fulvio for their successful defence!
Two very important events for our group in this month: Marie Kopp and Fulvio Grigolato were the first doctoral students to defend their thesis. Congratulations on the great job and the successful defence!
Congratulations to Paolo for receiving the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant!
This is an important recognition and support of our research program on mimicking biological phase separation to develop adaptable compartments and microreactors, which could find applications in the discovery, manufacturing and delivery of biological drugs.
[Biochim. Biophys. Acta] Analysis of biomolecular condensates and protein phase separation with microfluidic technology
Congratulations to Miriam for the publication of her review! In this work (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamcr.2020.118823), done in collaboration with Marie and with Prof. Andrew de Mello, are described the advantages of microfluidic technology for the analysis of several aspects of phase separation, including phase diagrams, dynamics of assembly and disassembly, rheological and surface properties, and the coupling between compartmentalization and biochemical reactions.
[mAbs] An accelerated surface-mediated stress assay of antibody instability for developability studies
Congratulations to Marie for the publication of her work! In this article (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420862.2020.1815995) she investigated the potential of a hydrophobic nanoparticle surface-mediated stress assay to assess the stability of mAbs during the early stages of drug development, showing that this platform has the potential to complement and increase the ability of the current set of screening techniques to assess protein aggregation and developability potential.
[Anal. Chem] Microfluidic Shrinking Droplet Concentrator for Analyte Detection and Phase Separation of Protein Solutions
Congratulations to Marie for the publication of her article! In this work (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b05329) she developed a droplet microfluidic platform to increase the concentration of analytes in solution via reduction of the sample volume under well-defined conditions. The power of this approach enables the detection of zeptomoles of droplets-encapsulated analytes, the analysis of pre-fractionated multicomponent mixtures, or the study of phase diagrams of macromolecules.
[Angewandte Chemie] Adaptive chemo-enzymatic microreactors composed of inorganic nanoparticles and bio-inspired intrinsically disordered proteins
Congratulations to Umberto for the publication of his work! In this article (https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202000835) it is presented a strategy to functionalize inorganic nanoparticles with intrinsically disordered protein domains. We demonstrate that the properties of the LCDs can be transferred to inorganic nanoparticles, inducing controlled phase separation that exhibits dynamicity, stimulus‐responsiveness, and localization of hybrid chemo‐enzymatic reactions.
[Chem. Systems Chem.] Acceleration of an Enzymatic Reaction in Liquid Phase Separated Compartments Based on Intrinsically Disordered Protein Domains
Congratulations to Andreas for the publication of his work! In this article (doi: 10.1002/syst.202000001) it is presented a strategy to couple the formation of biomolecular liquid compartments with reactions occuring within them. This flexible strategy enables the generation of biomolecular micro-reactors with enhanced reactivity, with potential applications in heterogeneous biocatalysis.
[Allergy] Establishment of a scalable microfluidic assay for characterization of population‐based neutrophil chemotaxis
Congratulations to Fulvio for the publication of his work! In this paper (https://doi.org/10.1111/all.14195) a microfluidic device for fully automated and quantitative assessment of neutrophil chemotaxis is described. It is also shown how the assay is able to measure the equilibrium and real‐time dynamic effects of specific modulators of neutrophil chemotaxis. This work was done in collaboration with the Immunology Research Laboratory of Prof. Onur Boyman, UZH.