Ricerc@Sapienza

Natural amphiphiles provides important self-assembling molecules for the preparation of nanostructures for environmental friendly and biomedical applications in nanotechnology. They can be used directly in the applications or can be modified to introduce additional functionalities and self-assembly features which can result in improved performances. Bile salts (BSs) are anionic natural steroidal surfactants obtained as products of the major route of the cholesterol methabolism. They have appealing amphiphilic features for the preparation of encapsulators and drug carriers and in the synthesis of inorganic nanoparticles. This project is aimed at exploring self-assembly and applications of BS and BS derivatives (BSD) obtained by performing modification of BS. The modifications are properly addressed to improve their efficiency in the applications. The project will be focused in particular on the investigation of: i) mixtures of BS and BSD with other natural amphiphiles like lecithin and with block copolymers (BC), to analyze the potential of BC as BS sequestrants in the treatment of BS malabsorption and hypercholesterolemia and the suitability of BS- and BSD-BC-lecithin mixed aggregates as drug carriers; ii) BSD containing polymerizable functions for the preparation of BSD based polymeric encapsulators; iii) the employment of BSD supramolecular nanotubes in the fabrication of supracolloidal superstructures.