Light-responsive nanofiber materials for biomedical applications

This proposal is based on the project “Smart photoactive nanofiber materials for biomedical applications” that was submitted to the Czech Sciences Foundation last year (evaluation: between 35 % of the best projects but it was not funded due to lack of budget) and suggests cooperation of three institutes for the preparation and characterization of advanced multifunctional nanofiber materials activated by visible light for photodynamic and biological/medical applications. The research includes the fabrication of materials and their basic characterization, photodynamic inactivation of common types of bacteria and viruses (cooperation with Faculty of Sciences, Charles University), photophysical/chemical evaluation (our Institute, JHI), and cell proliferation in tissue engineering (cooperation Institute of Physiology CAS). The experiments in JHI will include predominantly time-resolved delayed fluorescence, phosphorescence, and laser flash photolysis experiments. We contributed mainly by spectroscopy of singlet oxygen and other transient species. There is important feedback for synthesis which leads to a choice of efficient materials for biology. We have started fabrication and testing of several types of materials that need to be finished. Examples of such studies are materials for tissue engineering based on aminolyzed polycaprolactone nanofiber membranes (1), phosphatidylcholine-ganglioside vesicles with porphyrins for photodynamic killing of specific types of viruses (2), or size effect of biological target and diffusion of singlet oxygen controlling photodynamic inactivation of bacteria and viruses on/in nanofiber membranes (3).