New projects & Milestones

The group has continued to work on the PANTHER project (led jointly by Prof. Nogués and Dr Borja Sepúlveda) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. It is devoted to the development of novel nanomaterials and actuation devices to enable highly efficient wireless nanotherapeutic actuation and detection of the actuation strength.

Prof. Nogués and Dr Sepúlveda are also the two leaders of a new Spanish Proof of Concept project, called STERILAIR, which is devoted to the development of an efficient air disinfection filter and was started in 2021.

Since 2019, the group is carrying out two projects led by Dr Alejandro Gómez Roca. MAGPLADRUG (Ramon Areces Foundation) focuses on the development of cancer therapies based on the magnetoplasmonic control (actuation and monitoring) of photothermal therapies. PHOTOPHEOX (funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) studies magnetic iron oxide-based nanostructures for photothermal therapies, aiming at understanding the physics lying behind the optical properties of these compounds and at designing nanostructures to produce more efficient photo/magnetic therapies.

Activities for the COLMO project, led by Dr María José Esplandiu and Prof. Jordi Fraxedas and funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation in 2019, also continued in 2021. COLMO pursues the development and fundamental understanding of (photo) chemically self-propelled motors, triggered by innocuous fuels, which can also act collectively to steer motion and to promote a more cooperative and efficient motor functionality.

Finally, the group has continued to work in BeMAGIC, an EU Marie Curie-Skłodowska ITN project, which deals with the fabrication and characterization of magneto-electric nanostructures for wireless neural and muscle stimulation.