ESR 12 - Artificial organelles in cells

The project Artificial organelles in cells is focused on developing molecular factories that can produce and deliver drugs. More specifically, the project aims to design active nanoreactors acting as artificial organelles, that will produce over a defined period of time drugs in cells. To achieve the desired functionality, enzymes will be encapsulated into the cavity of synthetic architectures obtained via self-assembly of biocompatible, amphiphilic block copolymers, whereas channel proteins will be inserted within their polymer membrane. To locally obtain these drugs, the artificial organelles will be co-encapsulated in larger polymer compartments, namely cell-mimics, where the kinetics of the reaction cascades will be calculated and quantified both in-situ and in-vivo.