Doctoral Themes

Sustainable approaches for the functionalization of metallic surfaces with BioMOFs for the design of multibioactive bone implants

Supervisors

Marta Alves, martamalves@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Vânia André, vaniandre@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

José Nuno Canongia Lopes, jnlopes@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Registration Institution

Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

Project description

Antimicrobial agents are decisive in the treatment of many diseases. Their misuse led to the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). As such, the world is running out of effective medicines against infectious processes. Infections have devastating results in many treatments, including when associated with bone implants, for which bacterial infections are the second cause of implantation failure. This is particularly relevant in an ageing society with an uptrend of implantation surgeries and amongst which AMR assumes concerning contours.

Bearing these threats in mind, this project aims to develop multifunctional bio-metal-organic frameworks (BioMOFs) resulting from the coordination of important commercially active drugs to agents with relevant osteoinductive properties, that will be used in the design of multibioactive coatings on bioresorbable metallic implants. This approach will be closely supported by molecular dynamic studies.

As important as developing new strategies for specific problems, is their sustainability. Mechanochemistry, a versatile and efficient environment-friendly technique that drastically reduces the amounts of solvents, is the main BioMOFs’ synthetic pathway proposed. The functionalization of Zn with the as-synthesized BioMOFs will be carried out by electrophoresis with aqueous solutions, a fully innovative approach.

The team of supervisors will be reinforced by a collaboration with Prof. Ilaria Caccioti, including a short-term stay at University of Rome.

This ground-breaking project, inserted within the MatSoft, SusChem and MedLife thematic lines, consists of new methods for bone repair with multiple advantages: development of new multifunctional BioMOFs; local delivery and release of BioMOFs to prevent/treat infections; delivery of osteoinductive agents for bone regeneration.

Keywords

BioMOFs, sustainable chemistry, biomaterial, resorbable metals

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