July 2018

19 jul 2018 - 12:13 CET

María Rocío Villegas Díaz successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled "Hybrid Nanocarriers for the Selective Treatment of Complex Diseases"

This doctoral thesis has been focused on the development of nanosystems suitable for the treatment of two types of diseases: Cancer and Fibrosis.

- Polymeric nanocapsules able to house collagenase maintaining unaltered the catalytic capacity of the enzyme were designed with pH-responsive behavior in order to release the enzyme in tumoral tissues.

- Nanocarriers decorated with three different gadgets (Multifunctional Protocells): a lipid bilayer which avoids the drug premature release, collagenase nanocapsules for enhancing their penetration and targeting moieties for tumoral cell recognition, have been produced.

- Nanocarriers asymmetrically decorated with two targeting moieties in order to provide a sequential capacity to recognize tumoral cells and then, the inner mitochondria were produced.

- Finally, the treatment of fibrotic lesions with collagenase nanocapsules was addressed. Nanocapsules able to provide a prolonged and sustained collagenase release during more than 1 week were designed and obtained. A single injection of these collagenase nanocapsules showed a produced therapeutic effect while the conventional treatment barely produced any effect. These nanocapsules has been protected by a European Patent and their clinical application is currently under study.