Supramolecular nanomaterials for triggering biological functions

Luminescent molecules that can undergo self-assembly are of great interest for the development of new materials, sensors, biolabels…. The formation of soft assemblies allows the tuning of the emission color, by pressure and temperature leading to a new class of materials possessing reversible properties. The monitoring of the different emission properties, used as fingerprint for each of the assembled species, allowed an unprecedented real-time visualization of the evolving self-assemblies1.

Interestingly we discovered that even the supramolecular assemblies, that are transient species in solution, can be entrapped in organosilica structures, can be released in a very specific environment, to reach their equilibrium and therefore the supramolecular final product2.

Interestingly the supramolecular assembly can also form in living organism and we have studied the process in a transparent little animal, hydra. We found that using water soluble luminescent platinum complexes we can follow the assembly in the body of the animal and that the self-assembly trigger unexpected biological event such self-regeneration of tissues.

Finally the creation of hybrid nanoparticles containing oligonucleotides in the structure of the inert silica, allows an unprecedent control on the programmability and responsivity of a biocompatible material3,4. We have shown that the supramolecular nature of the nucleic acids can be used to generate supramolecular silica responsive to biomolecules and able to release nucleic acids on demand.



(1) A. Aliprandi, M. Mauro, L. De Cola Nature Chemistry 2016, 8, 10-15

(2) P. Picchetti, et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 202, 143, 7681-7687

(3) P. Picchetti et al J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 22896-22902

(4) P. Picchetti et al J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 22903-22912.