The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recently announced its 2007 Cozzarelli Prize1 recipients, chosen from more than 3,600 research articles published by PNAS in 2007. The award went to the UCD led paper entitled “Understanding the nanoparticle-protein corona using methods to quantify exchange rates and affinities of proteins for nanoparticles”.2 The Cozzarelli Prize acknowledges papers that reflect exceptional contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
“It is important to us for several reasons”, said Professor Kenneth Dawson of UCD’s new NanoBio Institute. “The work grew from research carried out in the frame of our Walton Professorship (Professor Linse) as well as our FP6 EU grant NanoInteract. It is important to us in launching the new BioNano Centre in UCD, helping to raise its profile early on, as well as sending out a message about what UCD is achieving in general. The BioNano Centre combined with the BioNanoInteract SRC3 will give Ireland a significant presence in this type of Bionano Science internationally.”
Scientifically it has been thought for some time that the way to direct particles to a given destination in the cell was to cleverly label the surface of the particle with chemicals. Dawson, along with his colleague Iseult Lynch had over the last few years, been working on a hypothesis that this may be incomplete.
“We argue that the main issue is to identify the biomolecules attracted to the surface of the particle in a real biological environment such as blood as the key idea to understand (and control) where particles go. It’s really like making a good address label for a letter - if you get that right there’s a good chance the letter will arrive in the right place. Now we believe that the address label for particles should also involve this ‘corona’ of biomolecules that are attracted to the surface, as well as whatever was grafted there.”
The team (and collaborators in Lund) has developed new methods to 'read' the nature of these proteins on the surface. These are now being further developed with the co-operation of Dolores Cahill and Giuliano Elia from the UCD Conway Institute.
“We believe that these developments will be key to ensuring the safe and responsible development of nanotechnology, as well as providing insights on how to develop novel kinds of 'nanomedicines'”, said Professor Dawson.
1 The award was established in 2005 as the PNAS Paper of the Year Prize and renamed the Cozzarelli Prize in 2007 to honor late PNAS Editor-in-Chief Nicholas R. Cozzarelli.
2 Tommy Cedervall, Iseult Lynch, Stina Lindman, Tord Berggård, Eva Thulin, Hanna Nilsson, Kenneth A. Dawson, and Sara Linse
3 Shared with TCD, UCC, NUIM, UL and several companies
