As multidrug resistance is emerging in several therapeutic treatments, like that of cancer and infectious diseases, developing new drugs is mandatory but takes years. A short term alternative is the development of novel strategies to deliver existing drugs in an optimized way. In this frame, the use of engineered nanocarriers is a very promising option. The objective of our research in the frame of the ITN projects Cyclon and Cyclonhit is to take full advantage of nanotechnology to efficiently encapsulate antitumorals and antibiotics in nanocarriers. In the frame of Cyclon we focused on the encapsulation of light-activable drugs in polymeric cyclodextrin and PMMA carriers. In the frame of CyclonHit we studied two known drugs, Ethionamide and Clofazimine, used for the treatment of TBC and Lepromatous Leprosy, respectively. Both suffer from very low solubility in water reducing drastically their bioavailability. We have studied two carrier systems consisting of polymeric cyclodextrins marked with fluorophores, and porous fluorescent silica particles with size ranging from 400 nm to 2 µm. We will discuss loading of the two drugs by these new fluorescent carrier systems, and their antibacterial activity. We will also illustrate how confocal fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) has given very important insights in the behavior of light-responsive drug carrier systems in biological context. Indeed FLIM has gained importance during the last decade being a powerful tool for investigations of fluorophores in a biological context or luminescent materials overcoming several limits of intensity imaging.
Ilse Manet graduated in Chemistry in 1992 at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) discussing the thesis “Luminescence properties of lanthanide ions in supramolecular species”. In 1998 she achieved her PhD Degree in Chemical Sciences at the University of Bologna, discussing the dissertation entitled “Luminescent molecular devices”, supervisor Prof. V. Balzani. In the period 1999-2000 she collaborated with the group of prof. G. Gottarelli and G. Spada at the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry in Bologna studying the self assembly of guanosines. In 2001 she became permanent researcher at the Istituto per la Sintesi Organica e la Fotoreattività (ISOF), National Research Council, Bologna (Italy). At ISOF her research interest focused on the photophysics and photochemistry of small molecules, generally drugs, in solution and in non-covalent complexes with synthetic carriers and biomolecules, like DNA and proteins, using different spectroscopic optical time-resolved techniques. Recently she started working in the field of confocal time-resolved fluorescence microscopy to study light-responsive drug carrier systems in cell cultures and characterize new luminescent materials. She has published ca. 75 articles in international peer-review journalsand contributed in 4 book chapters. She is active as reviewer for ACS, RSC, Wiley and Elsevier. She has participated in two FP7-ITN projects, and in two AIRC projects.