Amino acid-based polymers : from the origin of life to modern medicines

Abstract of the presentation by Fouzia Boulmedais

Nanocoatings of polysaccharides and proteins with bioactive properties for biomaterials

Biomaterials are medical devices designed to diagnose, treat or prevent disease. Their surface is where interactions with the biological environment mainly take place. By controlling these interactions, it is possible to improve their biocompatibility and confer bioactive properties. This is achieved by applying a coating to the surface of biomaterials. Simple to implement, the layer-by-layer technique enables nanometric films to be deposited on all types of surface, offering great potential. Generally ranging in thickness from 10 nm to 1 µm, these films are obtained at room temperature by alternate adsorption of oppositely charged polymers. The properties of these multilayer films can be adjusted according to the physico-chemical conditions under which they are produced (type of polymer, pH, ionic strength, etc.), enabling the immobilization of bioactive (macro)molecules (proteins, peptides, polyphenols, etc.). Drawing on nature's ingenuity, the work presented will describe how to endow surfaces with antibacterial properties or capable of inducing cell differentiation using polysaccharides and proteins. At the interface of chemistry and biology, this work was carried out in collaboration with Lydie Ploux (Inserm U1121, Strasbourg) and Halima Kerdjoudj (BIOS EA 4671, Reims).

Fouzia Boulmedais

Fouzia Boulmedais obtained her PhD in Chemistry and Physical Chemistry in 2003 from the University of Louis-Pasteur (Strasbourg). In 2004, she worked as a postdoc in Marcus Textor's team at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and Gleb Sukhorukhov's team at the Max-Planck Institute (Golm, Germany) on the electrodissolution of polyelectrolyte multilayers. After a second post-doc with Valérie Marchi on the functionalization of quantum dots, she was recruited as a CNRS researcher at the Charles-Sadron Institute in Strasbourg in 2006, where she obtained her habilitation to direct research in 2010. Her research focuses on the use of electrical stimuli to induce the construction of polymer films, as well as polysaccharide and protein films as antibacterial coatings. She is co-author of one hundred thirty publications and five patents. In 2013, she received the Young Researcher Award from the Physical Chemistry Division, jointly sponsored by the Société Chimique de France and the Société de Physique Française. In 2024, she was awarded the Jean-Pierre Pascault prize by the French Polymer Group. She is coordinator of the Institut thématique interdisciplinaire matériaux hiérarchiques et fonctionnels pour la santé, l'environnement et l'énergie (HiFunMat) bringing together two hundred fifty members from nine laboratories.

Abstract ofÉlisabeth Garanger's presentation

Elastin-inspired polymers: synthesis strategies and biomedical applications

Elastin-based polypeptides (ELPs) are heat-sensitive biopolymers whose primary sequence is derived from a natural extracellular matrix protein. Designed by genetic engineering and bioengineered products, they are perfectly monodisperse macromolecules. Although powerful for producing ELPs with exact primary structures and lengths, protein engineering techniques have certain limitations, in particular long bacterial cloning steps and limited chemical diversity due to the limited post-translational modifications possible in E. coli. My research activities are therefore devoted to exploring a dual biotechnological and chemical approach, combining recombinant biosynthesis of ELPs in E. coli with orthogonal chemical bioconjugation methods to broaden the diversity of ELP-based macromolecules and their self-assemblies for biomimetic, biological and/or biomedical applications. My presentation will give an overview of this work and detail a few selected examples from these different fields.

Élisabeth Garanger

Élisabeth Garanger has been a CNRS researcher since 2012. She obtained a PhD in chemistry and biology in 2005 at the University of Grenoble, carrying out an in-depth study of tumor-targeting peptides and their associated neo-angiogenesis. She continued her career at Massachusetts General Hospital as a postdoctoral fellow working on the design of contrast agents for multimodal molecular imaging. She joined the Organic Polymer Chemistry Laboratory (LCPO) in 2009 as a postdoctoral fellow and the European Institute of Chemistry and Biology (IECB) in 2010 as a project leader to develop bioactive peptide-based amphiphilic block copolymers. Since 2024, she has been Research Director at LCPO, devoting her research activities to the design of recombinant polypeptides based on elastin motifs and their bioconjugates for the design of biomaterials and active ingredient delivery systems.