Nanocarriers and drug delivery

Rose bengal is a photosensitiser: activated by light, it can kill cancer cells, but on its own it struggles to get into them. Branched polymers such as dendrimers and dendrons can bind it and help carry it across the cell membrane.

With experimental collaborators I have modelled how these carriers and rose bengal interact, using all-atom simulations and coarse-grained models built with the Martini force field, to explain which chemical features make complexation work. Related studies looked at how rose bengal enters cells at all, including the role of membrane transporters.