Université de Fribourg

Shear stress-responsive polymersome nanoreactors inspired by the marine bioluminescence of dinoflagellates

Rifaie‐Graham, Omar ; Galensowske, Nikolas F. B. ; Dean, Charlie ; Pollard, Jonas ; Balog, Sandor ; Gouveia, Micael G. ; Chami, Mohamed ; Vian, Antoine ; Amstad, Esther ; Lattuada, Marco ; Bruns, Nico

In: Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2020, vol. 60, no. 2, p. 904-909

Some marine plankton called dinoflagellates emit light in response to the movement of surrounding water, resulting in a phenomenon called milky seas or sea sparkle. The underlying concept, a shear-stress induced permeabilisation of biocatalytic reaction compartments, is transferred to polymer-based nanoreactors. Amphiphilic block copolymers that carry nucleobases in their hydrophobic block...

Université de Fribourg

Hemozoin-catalyzed precipitation polymerization as an assay for malaria diagnosis

Rifaie-Graham, Omar ; Pollard, Jonas ; Raccio, Samuel ; Balog, Sandor ; Rusch, Sebastian ; Hernández-Castañeda, María Andrea ; Mantel, Pierre-Yves ; Beck, Hans-Peter ; Bruns, Nico

In: Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 1369

Methods to diagnose malaria are of paramount interest to eradicate the disease. Current methods have severe limitations, as they are either costly or not sensitive enough to detect low levels of parasitemia. Here we report an ultrasensitive, yet low- resource chemical assay for the detection and quantification of hemozoin, a biomarker of all Plasmodium species. Solubilized hemozoin catalyzes...

Université de Fribourg

Structural behavior of cylindrical polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene-butylene)-block-polystyrene (SEBS) triblock copolymer containing MWCNTs: on the influence of nanoparticle surface modification

Hasanabadi, Noushin ; Nazockdast, Hossein ; Gajewska, Bernadetta ; Balog, Sandor ; Gunkel, Ilja ; Bruns, Nico ; Lattuada, Marco

In: Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics, 2017/218/22/n/a-n/a

In this work, the influence of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the self-assembly of nanocomposite materials made of cylinder-forming polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene- butylene)-block-polystyrene (SEBS) is studied. CNTs are modified with polystyrene (PS) brushes by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization to facilitate both their dispersion and the orientation of neighboring PS domains...

Université de Fribourg

Filling polymersomes with polymers by peroxidase-catalyzed atom transfer radical polymerization

Dinu, Maria Valentina ; Spulber, Mariana ; Renggli, Kasper ; Wu, Dalin ; Monnier, Christophe A. ; Petri-Fink, Alke ; Bruns, Nico

In: Macromolecular Rapid Communications, 2015, vol. 36, no. 6, p. 507–514

Polymersomes that encapsulate a hydrophilic polymer are prepared by conducting biocatalytic atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) in these hollow nanostructures. To this end, ATRPase horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is encapsulated into vesicles self-assembled from poly(dimethylsiloxane)-block-poly(2-methyl-2-oxazoline) (PDMS-b-PMOXA) diblock copolymers. The vesicles are turned into...