During 8-9 September 2022, the next scientific workshop took place at the Joint Research Center in Ispra in Italy, in the framework of the NanoMedTwin project. It was accompanied by the project management board meeting and was attended by representatives of all project partners: prof. Ion Tiginyanu (on site), prof. Veaceslav Ursachi (online), dr. Tudor Braniste (on site) and Irina Cojocaru (online) from the Technical University of Moldova; dr. Andrei Sarua and dr. Annela Seddon (on site) from the University of Bristol; dr. Apurba Dev (on site) from the Royal Insitute of Technology; dr. Birgit Andree (online ) from Hannover Medical School and Dana Remes (online) from EFPC. The workshop was also attended by several PhD students, namely Irina Plesco (online), as well as Vlad Ciobanu and Valentina Vorona, who are currently at JRC, as part of the student visits oganised by the NanoMedTwin project.
The meeting aimed at discussing the intermediate outputs of the project, the progress in the implementation of the project objectives and the analysis of the current situation, taking into account that the project ends in October 2022. The meeting was moderated by the host dr. Pascal Colpo, who opened the event with a short introduction, together with the project manager, prof. Ion Tighineanu.
The workshop started with the presentation of dr. Annela Seddon from the University of Bristol, who informed the audience on the latest results concerning self-organization of lipids and their use in nanobiomedicine. The lecture of dr. Seddon was followed by two reports presented by PhD students Vladimir Ciobanu and Irina Plesco. The students delivered presentations on their research carried out during visits at partner institutions.
During the meeting, the partners discussed the situation with the realization of the project tasks, as well as financial issues. The members of the consortium established the dates of the upcoming project events: Brokerage event on 23 September 2022 and the final project meeting on 21 October 2022 at the Technical University of Moldova. Special attention was paid to the organization of the remaining expert visits, which haven’t been carried out due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Moldova’s neighboring country, Ukraine. In particular, the attendees discussed the possibility to organize expert visits to KTH in Sweden and MHH in Germany. The partners also agree to undertake additional efforts for stimulation mutual visits of PhD students in the consortium.
Dr. Pascal Colpo informed the participants about the JRC`s programs on open access to the research infrastructure, while Dana Remes presented the new calls under the HE programs. Later on the participants discussed several new concepts of the future joint proposals: use of 3D nanoarchitecture as a flexible scaffold for living cells growth; use of hollow magnetic nanoparticles as drug delivery platforms; use of liquid marbles based on aero-GaN as micro-bioreactors, etc.
The visit program included the visit to the Nanobiotechnology Laboratory of the JRC, where the guests become acquainted with the modern techniques and equipment available for the characterization of nanoparticles and the assessment of cytotoxicity.
