Last Friday, the ALBA-UAB PhD student Johannes Groen defended his thesis about the behaviour of a nanomaterial drug specifically designed to inhibit the collagen overproduction after a myocardial fibrosis event. The ALBA synchrotron light was crucial to observe the induced morphological changes in the affected cells. Groen’s results set the precedent for the development of pre-clinical studies of novel therapeutic agents.
Experiments led by a PhD student at the ALBA Synchrotron revealed, for the first time, the location of a novel hybrid nanomaterial designed to inhibit the collagen overproduction after a myocardial fibrosis event and the induced morphological changes in the cells. Obtaining this high-resolution 3D information of cells is crucial for developing pre-clinical studies of novel therapeutic agents.
A study from several Italian institutions and the ALBA Synchrotron suggest crystalline calcium carbonate as a precursor of hydroxyapatite in the process of bone formation. Since hydroxyapatite is a mineral constituting 70% of the mass of bone, these findings may have potential applications in the development of new therapeutic approaches in bone cancer. Thanks to the MISTRAL beamline at ALBA, researchers were able to create a 3D tomogram of human cells and visualize calcium depositions inside them.
Large research facilities like the ALBA Synchrotron have become versatile infrastructures at the service of the scientific community to develop knowledge and join forces in the fight against the pandemic caused by Covid-19 and other diseases. On the World Health Day, ALBA takes stock of the experiments carried out in the last year that help to find answers to improve our living conditions.
The combination of magnetic images from surface sensitive PEEM and bulk sensitive transmission X-ray microscopy supported by micromagnetic simulations, provided experimental evidence of the existence of the stabilization magnetic hopfion quasiparticles in magnetic multilayers.
