Research

Group for nano and biotechnological applications is a young interdisciplinary research group at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering University of Ljubljana. The Faculty of Electrical Engineering has a long tradition of excellent interedisciplinary research in the field of biomedical engineering.

The Group for nano and biotechnological applications includes physicists, biologists and biochemists as well as several undergraduate and graduate students from different areas of life sciences and technology.

The research work of the Group for nano and biotechnological applications includes different areas of biomedicine, biotechnology and nanobiotechnology related to drug delivery methods and analysis of related mechanisms including delivery of small molecules and macromolecules with electroporation, gene electrotransfer and silencing in vitro; development of stable magnetic nanoparticles for biomedical applications; and research of metabolic pathways of cancer cells.

 

The main areas of research are:

  1.    biotechnology applications with electroporation method – gene electrotransfer in vitro and in 3D in vitro tissue models, delivery of small molecules, proteins, DNA and short RNAi into various mammalian, tumour and primary human cells,
  2.   development and characterisation of magnetic nanoparticles; development of new formulations of magnetic nanoparticles (NP) for biomedical applications (drug delivery, cell labelling), analysis of NP uptake mechanisms and cytotoxicity, assessment of potential nanotoxicity and immunogenicy,
  3.   in  vitro research of cellular metabolic pathways of cancer cells in relation to Warburg effect and analysis of pharmacological modulation of cell metabolism for therapy of cancer.

The members of the group have track record and are cited across different fields from biophysics, biotechnology and material sciences to biomedicine and industry. Collaboration with complementary research groups in Slovenia and abroad enables efficient translation of the research results into clinical and industrial setting.