Barbara conducts her research in the IDeAS team at the Softmat laboratory.
On the 17th of December, she defended her habilitation to supervise PhD students, marking a milestone in her almost 25-year research career.
In 2004, Barbara defended her PhD at the University of Florence in Italy, on the modulation of interactions between proteins. She then undertook 2 post-doctoral contracts: the first at the ESPCI in Paris on an optimised protein crystallisation system, and the second in Germany at the Jülich Research Institute, where she spent 3 years working on the structural and dynamic characterisation of block copolymer micelles.
In 2008, she was recruited by the CNRS to the Softmat laboratory (formerly IMRCP) to carry out her research into the organisation of macromolecules and lipids.
The great interest of soft matter lies in its ability to be shaped at will, by exploiting molecular interactions that are often weak and reversible. In the field of polymers and their assemblies, it is essential to understand how a specific macromolecular architecture induces an assembly able to respond in a desired way to stimuli.
To date, Barbara’s work deals with this approach by exploring how the chemical properties and interactions between macromolecules, and between macromolecules and lipids, determine their supramolecular structure.
The aim is to gain a better understanding of self-assembly mechanisms in order to design innovative nanomaterials capable of responding to different stimuli, and to investigate the interactions between macromolecular systems and the main components of biological membranes, namely lipids.
This work was made possible through collaborations with about ten laboratories in France and abroad.
Some research projects:
>> Hybrid liquid-crystal polymers and magnetic nanoparticles, where a strong coupling between the orientation order of the liquid-crystal units, chemically linked to the polymer matrix, and the anisotropic cobalt nanoparticles was sought in order to obtain a response to the magnetic field;
>> Self-assembly of copolymers, seeking to characterise their structure in detail and understand how the nature and architecture of the constituent elements impact their response to stimuli;
>> Interactions between polymer self-assemblies and biomimetic membranes in order to rationalise the design of nanovectors to optimise cell entry.
Her future perspectives focus on:
>> Liquid crystalline nanoparticles: she is interested in their potential advantages as nanovectors, in particular thanks to their ability to effectively fuse with cell membranes, while seeking to make them sensitive to various stimuli. She also develops some alternatives to the commonly used lipids to obtain original liquid crystal nanoparticles;
>> Exploring the behaviour of different families of nanovectors (including liquid crystal nanoparticles) in interaction with biological or model membranes, focusing on the effects of the biological environment.
A key result of her recent research:
Concerning the interactions between cell membranes and polymer-based nano-objects (nanovectors, NVs) used in nanomedicine for drug delivery, she demonstrated that, depending on the physico-chemical characteristics of their hydrophobic block, NVs induce strikingly different effects on biomimetic membranes.
In the frame of Photodynamic Therapy, she has shown that the photosensitiser microenvironment governs its phototoxicity.
To find out more, read the articles published in the journals Nanoscale in 2018 and Cancers in 2020.
Congratulations to Barbara!
- left: Poly(ethylene oxide) -block- Poly(styrene) micelles, PEO-PS
- middle & right: Poly(ethylene oxide) -block- Poly(caprolactone) micelles, PEO-PCL