TT.VIII.A

SYNOPSIS

The sessions will focus on four different topics all involving the application of inorganic and organic nanosytem to nano- and bio-medicine and bio-electronics.
The Neuromorphic systems based on memristive devices and bioelectronics.
Organic based Biosensing and memristive devices are discussed in terms of mimicking and interfacing natural systems. The contribution to the field of drug delivery studies and bioelectronics ar epresented together with the recent achievements in developing memristive devices based both on PANI/PEO and PEDOT::PSS polymers. The evolution from simple logic elements up to the first organic based Perceptron are discussed envisaging the perspectives.

Carbon Nanostructures for applications in regenerative and nano-medicine.
The tailoring of functional interfaces based on nanostructured sp2 and sp is presently giving an edge to biomedical applications, going from tissue engineering and generation of artificial organs to fabrication of prosthetic and packaging systems.
The shaping of nanoC-based materials able to mimic the nanostructures of natural extracellular matrices is discussed together with the control of surface chemistry of the C nanostructures for interactions with biological systems. Relevant examples of multivalent architectures, characterized by biocompatibility and long-time reliability are for C-sp2; few layers graphene assembled in shaped platelets; high density arrays of conical nanostructures; dendrimers with various shape/branching; arrays of carbon nanotubes for C-sp3; Shaped aggregates of nanodiamond grains and nanocrystalline diamond films; arrays of 1D nanostructures (nanorods, whiskers, nanopillars, nanocones) obtained by plasma etching of diamond films.

Smart magnetic materials for energy efficiency and biomedicine
I will focus on ferromagnetic shape memory materials. It is an emerging class of materials that, tanks to the strong interplay between magnetism and structure at the different length-scales, show “giant” magneto/elasto-caloric and thermo/magneto-mechanical effects. These effects can be driven by external stimuli, such as magnetic field, temperature, pressure and stress and pave the way to novel energy-efficient and smart technologies.

Genotoxicology of Engineered Nanomaterials (ENMs) in human cells is presented, with particular emphasis to the transcription of genes involved in mitochondrial organization and function in HepG2 cells exposed to cadmium sulphide (CdS) QDs. At low concentrations, exposure to CdS QDs induced only minor damage to nuclear DNA, and none to mitochondrial DNA. However, the stress caused an increase in the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which triggered the mitochondria-mediated intrinsic apoptotic pathway involving a cascade of transcriptomic events, finally prompting the activation of a rescue pathway.