Nano-Therapeutics

Electro and photot-thermal activatable drug delivery bandages
Transdermal skin patches have become a widely used approach for painless delivery of drugs. One major current limitation of these systems remains the restricted skin permeation of proteins and peptides as exemplified by insulin, necessitating different considerations for their successful transdermal delivery.  We work on the design of novel heat-based patch designs based on the integration of photo-thermal agents or of nano-engineered heating elements for photothermal and electrothermal enhanced transdermal drug delivery. Application to answer to unmet needs in diabetics are the focus of this thematic as well as the use for bacterial ablation. The application to treat high blood pressure is a new focal point.

Drug delivery via mucoadhesive bandages
Tansport of drugs across the buccal membrane is generally far simpler than the skin. Through less permeable that the sublingual area, the buccal oral cavity provides an ideal targeting zone as it is is well-vascularized, allowing drugs to be rapidly absorbed into the venous system underneath the oral mucosa. Being different from transdermal drug delivery route, mucosal surfaces are lacking the stratum corneum barrier, resulting in faster drug delivery. The inherent barriers for efficient buccal mucosal drug delivery are the keratinized tissue and the elimination of the drugs to the flashing action of saliva in the absence of uni-directional mouth patches. Buccal delivery requires the desing of mucoadhesive drug delivery bandages and this is one of the focal points of your research.

Nano-Diagnostics

Highly-sensitive point-of-care testing (POCT) assays represent the next challenge for biological detection in several medical areas. Biosensors hold great value as diagnostic strategy as by simple restructuring their sensing module these analytical devices can be used for the sensing of protein biomarkers, as well as the presence of bacterial and viral particles. We use notably electrochemical, electrical and plasmonic based transducers for the sensing.

Sensing of protein biomarkers in serum and other bodily liquids
Over more than 10 years, cardiac troponin (cTn) has become the preferred serum biomarker for diagnosis a analytical sensitivity have resulted in the availability of highly sensitive cTnI (hs-cTnI) assaysthat enable detection of cTnI values that are ten-fold lower than the 40 pg mL-1 cut-off for detection of myocardial ischemia. Most importantly, this hs-cTnI assay generationcan finally differentiate healthy patients from patients with myocardial ischemia and early necrosis due to their adapted detection limit of 1.5 pg mL-1 (LOQ=2.5 pg mL-1).
Sensing of viral particles
The COVID-19 pandemic, due to SARS-CoV-2 virus, started as a temporary sanitary issue, and further morphed into a long-lasting epidemic outbreak. In the absence of anti-viral drugs an efficient manner to limit COVID-19 spreading is through fast, accurate and cheap point-of-care (POC) testing. However, POC tests developed so far lack sensitivity compared to RT-PCR. Development of differnet POC sensing concepts are undergoing in our group, inlcuding clinical trials.

Nano-Vaccination

Vaccination remains one of the most effective tools to prevent infectious diseases. To ensure that the best possible antigenic components are chosen to stimulate a cognitive immune response, boosting antigen presentation using adjuvants is common practice. Nanodiamond as well as carbon quantum dots are under investigation as a rapid and versatile platform for antigen conjugation and for their adjuvant properties. This work is in direct collaboraiton with CHU Lille (E. Faure) and Institute Pasteur (P. Gosset) and supported by the Region Hauts-de-France.