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IBEC Seminar: Conrado Aparicio
Friday, October 14 @ 10:00 am–12:00 pm
Peptides and bioinstructive polymers on surfaces for prevention of oral infections
Conrado Aparicio, Faculty of Odontology, UIC Barcelona and Associated Researcher – IBEC
Oral infections are the most prevalent infectious diseases worldwide. We have explored bioinspired modification of surfaces of restorative/regenerative materials and implants as well as dental tissues to address oral infections by harnessing the biomolecular toolbox –oligopeptides, proteins, recombinamers, … and thus, mitigating the worldwide threat of antimicrobial resistance.
One of our strategies aimed at exploiting secondary structure and self-assembly of anti-biofilm peptides and recombinamers to increase anti-biofilm potency vs relevant oral biofilms and to form highly hydrophobic interfaces to obtain dual-action surfaces to address infection in dental peri-tisular and peri-implant sites.
Alternatively, we have found inspiration in the natural junction at the tooth-oral mucosa interface. Teeth, long-lasting percutaneous organs, feature soft tissue attachment through adhesive structures, hemidesmosomes, in the junctional epithelium basement membrane adjacent to teeth. This soft tissue attachment prevents bacterial infection of the tooth despite the rich – and harsh – microbial composition of the oral cavity. Consequently, we have tapped basement membrane peptides known to engage specific integrins as well as synthesized new bioinstructive photocurable resins that stimulate formation of hemidesmosomes on synthetic and natural surfaces.
We recently have also combined those strategies with immunomodulatory regulation to reduce inflammation triggered by pathogenic biofilms causing oral infections.
Dr. Conrado Aparicio is Professor at the Department of Odontology of UIC Barcelona – Universitat International de Catalunya, Spain. He is associated researcher at IBEC-Institute for BioEngineering of Catalonia and elected fellow of the AIMBE-American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Dr. Aparicio is a materials scientist and engineer by training. After starting his academic career at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) he moved to the University of Minnesota (UMN) where he spent 12+ years in the Department of Restorative Sciences, and was the Deputy Director of the MDRCBB-Minnesota Dental Research Center for Biomaterials and Biomechanics. Last year Professor Aparicio returned to his hometown, Barcelona, as FBA-BIST-UIC fellow.
For two decades he has carried out multidisciplinary research on bioinspired biomaterials and interfaces for directing biological responses to repair/regenerate bone and oral mucosa as well as to prevent bacterial infections for dental applications. Using inspiration from nature’s molecules and structures, his team designs and develops bioactive surfaces using supramolecular assembly and enabling spatial-temporal control of bioactive responses.
He has published 130+ research papers and has lectured around the World on bioactivation of synthetic biomaterials for reparative and regenerative dentistry and medicine. He is co-inventor of multiple patents, one of them licensed and marketed by a dental implant company. He has been awarded multiple national and international research projects from US and EC agencies, foundations and corporations, in interdisciplinary collaborations between academic and corporate engineers, biologists, and clinicians.
