Dr. Oscar F. Silvestre
“Seeing is believing”, nanomedicine plays an important role from regenerative medicine to cancer research, however, direct visualization and tracking of the nanocarriers/loaded drugs in biological systems is under-explored. I will present recent studies performed at the Ultrafast Bio- and Nanophotonics Group, INL - International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory. Specifically concerning the development of drug delivery nanocarrier and the importance of having precision tools, such as advanced optical microscopy technologies for an integrated characterization of these systems. In one study we encapsulated the anticancer mitochondria drug Elesclomol into a lipid cubosome nanocarrier with demonstrate improved cytotoxicity compared to the free drug. Confocal microscopy indicated nanocarrier accumulation close to the mitochondria network with sub-micrometer distance. At the same time, we established multi-photon fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy as a technique to monitor the therapeutic action in live cells of the anticancer drug nanocarrier. This by following the evolution of the autofluorescence lifetime signal associated to protein-bound/unbound endogenous NAD(P)H components. Overall, I believe this integrated approach will be important to further improve the design of effective nanomedicine delivery systems, highly significant for clinical translation.