Group for Functionalized Biomaterials

The Group for Functionalized Biomaterials is interested in the development of polymeric materials, functional surfaces and multifunctional nanoparticles for biomedical applications:
 
• Microparticle-based strategies for multistep synthesis and catalysis
• Surface functionalization for the engineering of viral biosensors
• Polymeric, lipidic and hybrid nano-assemblies for gene delivery
• Theranostic nanoparticles

The research activities of our group are devoted to the development of new chemical entities for bio-applications. We are mainly interested in the design, synthesis and evaluation of functionalized nanomaterials, thin surfaces and biomaterials for therapeutic applications as imaging probes, theranostic nanoparticles, viral biosensors and synthetic gene vectors.



NEWS

EDCH Research Day © 2026 EPFL/Delia Lazari

The GBF participated in the EDCH Research Day!

— The second edition of the EDCH Research Day took place on October 8th 2026 and was a big success with 20 flash talks by PhD candidates and close to 50 posters.

BCS 2026 © 2026 EPFL

Sandrine participates in the IAAM Fellow Summit 2026 in Stockholm!

— Sandrine Gerber gave the lecture entitled "Functionalized Harmonic Nanoparticles for Targeted Bioimaging and Drug Delivery" at the IAAM Fellow Summit – Baltic Conference Series which is held in Stockholm, 05-07 October 2026.

© 2026 EPFL

The article of Ali, Arsène and Perrine has just been published!

— We are very pleased to share that our recent developments in the field of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for gene delivery has just been published in ACS Applied Nano Materials. This work was conducted in collaboration with the team of Prof. Jörg Huwyler at the University of Basel, who performed the biological evaluation of the novel LNP formulations engineered in our group.

ESB2026 © 2026 EPFL

Pauline and Simon presented their research at the ESB2026!

— At the 35th Annual Conference of the European Society of Biomaterials in Antwerp, Belgium – September 7-11, 2026 – Pauline Skigin and Simon Dumolard presented a poster entitled, respectively: "Modular Synthesis of Crosslinkable Ionizable Lipids for DNA Lipid Nanoparticles" and "A Structure-Property Framework Highlighting the Role of siRNA Release from Chitosan-PEI Polyplexes"

DNA nuclear import © 2026 EPFL/Alessandra Cavegn

The first paper from our Sinergia project has just been published!

— We are very pleased to share that the recent study led by Alessandra Cavegn in the group of Prof. Jörg Huwyler at the University of Basel on the enhancement of plasmid DNA (pDNA) nuclear import has just been published in the Journal of Controlled Release. In our group, Pauline Skigin contributed to the design of conjugation strategies to functionalize the pDNA nanocarriers with targeting nuclear localization signaling (NLS) peptides. 

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