miRGold Design and evaluation of therapeutic agents and sensors based on non-coding RNAs and nanostructures

Prof. Alvaro Somoza

Funding :

Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Programa Retos de la Sociedad 2013-2016. MINECO SAF2014-56763-R

Duration: 2015 - 2017

36 months

The aim of this project is to develop systems based on gold nanoparticles and oligonucleotides for the detection and treatment of Uveal Melanoma.Gold nanoparticles functionalized with oligonucleotides present interesting properties for nanomedicine applications. For instance, these nanostructures can translocate easily into the cells and deliver chemotherapeutic drugs or nucleic acids. We plan to use this property to improve the delivery of the mTor inhibitor AZD8055 or siRNAs against genes and microRNAs involved in Uveal Melanoma. Regarding the detection of this type of cancer, we plan to functionalize gold nanoparticles with oligonucleotides with the complementary sequence of selected microRNAs and fluorescent dyes, for the detection in vivo, and hydrophobic molecules, for the detection ex vivo. In the first case, the disease will be detected by fluorescence inside the cells, and in the second case, the aggregation of the gold nanoparticles will be used as read-out after the incubation of the functionalized nanostructures with RNA extracts.