Pilar Rivera

Group website

Research Outline

Translational nanomedicine: understanding and engineering the nanomaterial-biological system interface by creating a theranostic tool towards a more personalized medicinal disease management.

Research Lines

• Plasmonic nanocapsules for concomitant drug release and hyperthermia (chemo-hyperthermia)

The main aim of this project is to design a biodegradable nanocarrier that combines a physical (heat) and a chemical (chemotherapeutic) approach to treat solid tumors.

• Plasmonic nanocapsules for ion sensing.

This project focus on the synthesis of a sensor tool for different ions or small molecules using an optical read out measurable with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

• Targeted nanomedicines for oncology.

It aims at validating a tumor biomarker as targeting unit to unequivocally target a nanocarrier for early diagnosis or as dual drug delivery system.

• Silica nanoparticles for vaccination.

Loading adjuvant mesoporous silica nanoparticles with a small peptide-based vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease.

Team during 2017-18

• Postdocs: Marcos Sanles Sobrido, Dionysia Tsoutsi.
• PhD students: Paula Zamora Pérez, Weiteng An, Ruixue Xu, Can Xiao.
• Technicians: Yolanda Tor.
• Research visits:

  • Shreya Shrikindaye, Master Final Degree, Heidelberg University (Germany).

  • Lars Klepzig, Research Stay, Hannover University (Germany).

     

Selected publications 2017-18

• Tsoutsi D, Sanles-Sobrido M, Cabot A, Gil PR (2018) Common aspects influencing the translocation of SERS to biomedicine. Current medicinal chemistry 25 (35), 4638-4652. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/cmc/2018/00000025/00000035/art00014.

• Hu J, Romero Abujetas D, Tsoutsi D, Leggio, Rivero F, Martín Rodríguez E, Aguilar Torres R, Sánchez-Gil JA, Loro Ramírez H, Gallego D, Lamela Rivera H, Rivera Gil P, Alfonso F, García Solé J, Jaque D (2018) Experimental evaluation of gold nanoparticles as infrared scatterers for advanced cardiovascular optical imaging. Apl Photonics 3 (8), 080803. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.5027907.

• Simeonidis K, Martinez-Boubeta C, Zamora-Pérez P, Rivera-Gil P, Kaprara E, Kokkinos E, Mitrakas M (2018) Implementing nanoparticles for competitive drinking water purification. Environmental Chemistry Letters, 1-15. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-018-00821-5.

• Zamora-Perez P, Tsoutsi D, Xu R, Rivera_Gil P (2018) Hyperspectral-enhanced dark field microscopy for single and collective nanoparticle characterization in biological environments. Materials 11 (2), 243. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/11/2/243.

• Simeonidis K, Martinez‐Boubeta C, Rivera-Gil P, Ashraf S, Samaras T, Angelakeris M, Tresintsi S, Mitrakas M, Parak WJ, Monty C, Balcells L (2017) Regeneration of arsenic spent adsorbents by Fe/MgO nanoparticles. Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology 92 (8), 1876-1883. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jctb.5187.

Other relevant information 2017-18

Álvarez Puebla RA, Fenollosa Esteve R, Messeguer Rico FJ, Rodríguez MI, Álvarez Rodríguez S, Álvarez Rodríguez R, Rodríguez de Lera A, García-Rico Fernández E, Yu X, Carregal Romero S, Parak WJ, Villanueva Leal C, Rivera Gil P (2017) Silicon particles targeting tumor cells. US Patent App. 15/313,574. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170189550A1/en

Invitation as keynote speaker at Silver Jubilee Assembly of Advanced Materials Congress (AFMC 2019, www.advancedmaterialsseries.com/afmc19 ) Stockholm, Sweden, March 24th - 27th 2019.