Research projects

The application of Biotechnology represents an important advance, leading to industrial processes that are more sustainable and efficient in economic terms. This project combines new biotechnological developments to create products with innovative applications in the area of biomedicine. It does so by means of the biocatalytic transformation of a natural and extremely abundant material like glucose into specific high added-value products. In this project we will first centre on developing and designing biocatalytic strategies that make it possible to obtain optimised biocatalysts. These will offer high levels of operational stability and regioselectivity in the different processes which are proposed. Different tools will be used for this purpose, such as molecular biology techniques and immobilisation on solid supports to obtain catalysts with a high level of stability, activity and regioselectivity. These new optimised biocatalysts will be used to efficiently, selectively and sustainably prepare deoxyglucose and derivates, compounds which are of great interest for diagnostic processes and the treatment of diseases; glycopolimers will also be prepared, and these compounds are widely used in cosmetics and biomedicine. A chemical-enzymatic process will be used for this, involving the development of two biocatalytic stages using immobilised lipase and glucoside catalysts. In the preparation of the glycopolimers, before the copolimerization process the corresponding alquil-glucosil derivatives will be produced regioselectively, using regioselective monode protection of peracetylated monosaccharide catalyzed by immobilised lipases as the first and main step. Finally, these new glycopolymers will be characterised and evaluated in two biomedical studies, for their effect on cytotoxicity and cell location.