Duration

01/03/2018 - 28/02/2021

Coordinator

Xavier Fernàndez-Busquets

Funded by

ERA-NET Cofund EURONANOMED III / Instituto de Salud Carlos III — Project Code: AC17/00111

Whereas nanomedical approaches to cure diseases are prevalent in the developed world, there is an astonishing lack of nanomedicines to treat the main causes of death in the impoverished areas of the planet: infectious diseases, among which malaria is prominent.

The unmet medical and patient need of malaria eradication will not be achieved unless the targeted delivery of new drugs is vastly improved. Encapsulation of drugs in targeted nanovectors is a rapidly growing area with a clear applicability to infectious disease treatment, and pharmaceutical nanotechnology has been identified as a potentially essential tool in the future fight against malaria. Polymers offer virtually unlimited diversity in chemistry, dimensions and topology, which renders them a class of materials that is particularly suitable for applications in nanoscale drug delivery strategies.

Objectives

The objective of NANOpheles is to design polymeric nanovectors for the delivery of antimalarial agents to Plasmodium stages in the mosquito, and to characterise the efficacy of nanovectors and antimalarial agents to reduce mosquito infectiousness.

This objective will be achieved through:

• synthesis of nanocarriers capable of encapsulating antimalarials (currently used drugs and future antimicrobial peptides, antibodies, and dsRNA) and of preventing their degradation in storage conditions
• engineering of targeted nanovectors capable of delivering their antimalarial contents to Plasmodium stages in the Anopheles mosquito
• evaluation of the effect of selected nanovectors (loaded with antimalarial agents) on the mosquito stages of Plasmodium and their transmission capacity in a murine model of malaria

NANOpheles unites groups which are leading laboratories in nanoparticle synthesis, targeted drug delivery to Plasmodium-infected cells, molecular and cell biology of malaria, mouse models and mosquito vectors of malaria, and clinical aspects of malaria.

Total funding

977,440.00 €

ERA-NET Cofund EURONANOMED III. EUROPEAN INNOVATIVE RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN NANOMEDICINE