The main purpose of this project is the use of the very recent developments made by our research group on cellulose surface modification by selective oxidation reactions in order to design new techniques for surface immobilization of biomolecules, particularly hIgG.

The scientific objectives to be addressed in this project are:

O1. Nanostructured cellulose interface preparation, the base of sensor - will be explored the novelty of the selective oxidation protocol of cellulose proposed by us,  by using highly reactive N-hydroxyphthalimide (NHPI) to selectively introduce the –COOH groups in the anhydroglucose unit of cellulose.

O2. Linking the reactive sites on the sensor base surface - this step imply the use of the previously synthetized surfaces as platforms for the anchoring of binding sites for further immobilization of hIgG. There are known several types of ligands to be used for the protein immobilization, which includes: small organic compounds that are able to dock into binding sites on proteins, inorganic metals that form coordination complexes with certain amino acids in proteins, hydrophobic molecules that can bind nonpolar pockets in biomolecules, proteins with specific binding regions that are able to interact with other proteins, antibodies, which can be designed to target any biomolecule through their antigen binding sites. A good example of biomimetic ligands toward antibodies is ligand 22/8, a protein A mimetic which will be used in our project. Another ligand which will be used in our project, rely on acetylated-HWRGWV (Ac-HWRGWV), a short peptide which selectively bind the Fc region of hIgG.

O3. Sensor testing for specific detection of proteins - covalent binding is an efficient strategy based on the chemical reaction of side chain attachment between active amino acid group on the protein surface and active functionality attached onto the polymeric support surface.