Seminar 2: Dr. Mohit Kumar, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Barcelona, Spain on "Active Vesicles: Nanocontainers for temporally regulated cargo delivery"

05 Jan 2024
Seminar Room # 350, second floor annex

Speaker: Dr. Mohit Kumar
Faculty of Chemistry, University of Barcelona, Spain

Title: "Active Vesicles: Nanocontainers for temporally
regulated cargo delivery."

Day and Date: Friday, January 05, 2024

Time: 3:10 - 3:50 pm

Venue: Room no. 350, Chemistry Department
Second floor, Annex

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Hosted by Prof. Chidambar Kulkarni

Talk Title : Active Vesicles: Nanocontainers for temporally regulated cargo delivery.
Abstract
Chemical reactions in living systems are regulated by metabolic processes like the anabolic formation of bio-macromolecules and catabolic degradation of food into energy. These reactions often consume chemical energy and result in active self-assembled structures that exist under out-of-equilibrium (OOE) conditions, which facilitate unique functions of life. In this talk, I will discuss a bio-inspired supramolecular system that form transient lipid vesicles under OOE conditions, resulting in vesicles with a programmable lifetime. We use simple imine chemistry for the formation of phospholipid and enzymatic ester hydrolysis for the degradation of lipids and the resultant vesicles. We will also demonstrate that the lifetime of these structures can be easily regulated based on the requirement. Finally, these active lipid vesicles can dynamically regulate the release kinetics of encapsulated cargos (drug and dye molecules) by simply changing the concentration of enzyme. We are working towards using these active vesicles as an adaptive interface for targeted drug delivery.