Project description: we have an internship position available for a UU GSLS MSc student for their MSc research internship (6 to 9 months) for the NC-CHOICE project. In this project you will address the influence of Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) endosomal escape on mRNA delivery and translation in healthy and degenerate intervertebral disc cells. This will help us to understand how LNPs interact and are processed by interverbal disc cells to, ultimately, develop a lipid nanoparticle delivery platform as therapeutic strategy to treat intervertebral disc degeneration. In this project we aim to develop a Galectin-9 reporter cell line that will be used to evaluate the endosomal escape and mRNA delivery in the cytosol of disc cells. You will use the following techniques:
- Cell culture techniques
- Generation of Galectin-9 reporter cells
- LNPs preparation (microfluidic system NanoAssemblr)
- LNPs characterization techniques (DLS, ELS, RiboGreen and Cholesterol Assay)
- Confocal microscopy
Supervisor: dr. Aida Moreira
Preferred starting date: to be discussed
Duration: 6 to 9 months
Eligibility: students enrolled at the GSLS at Utrecht University. Especially suitable for students enrolled in the programs: Regenerative Medicine and Technology (RMT), Drug innovation, Bio Inspired Innovation (BII), or Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences (MCLS).
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