Manuel Bañobre is a staff researcher in the Health unit at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory at Braga, Portugal, where he leads the Advanced (magnetic) Theranostic Nanostructures Lab -A(m)TheNa-, mainly focused on the development of functional materials targeting disease-targeted magnetic hyperthermia (MH), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and drug delivery (DD) applications. His work has provided important insights into the physico-chemical optimization of iron oxides nanoparticles as efficient high-performance MRI and magnetic hyperthermia probes in cancer therapy, bone tissue engineering and food related applications. Currently, his principal research group interests involve the engineering of unconventional MNPs and inorganic-organic hybrid nanocomposites as multifunctional nanomedical platforms for high sensitivity targeted diagnosis and therapy, i.e. dual T1-T2 MRI contrast agents, multimodal MRI/optical imaging probes and hyperthermia-triggered MR image-guided drug delivery. Hehas participated in several major competitive research projects funded by national, EU and international sources (H2020-PANNA, FP7-MAGISTER INVENNTA, MAGNO, B-SELF, etc.) and has led several industrial collaborations. He has published about 40 articles in high impact factor international peer-reviewed journals, has been granted 1 patent, and participated in the formation of 1 nanotechnology based Start-up Company. He is member of numerous evaluation boards and he has also supervised several PhD students and master-degrees.
International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) is a global center of excellence in applied nanotechnology research, with an International Governmental Organization (IGO) legal status, created by the Governments of Spain and Portugal. INL´s strategic research is devoted to the development of nanotechnologies in the Health, Food and Environmental, Renewable energies and Information and Communication areas. INL is fostering an interdisciplinary environment where physicists, chemists, biologists, pharmacists and electrical engineers, are integrated in an interdisciplinary and international enviroment that aims nowadays challenge society problems through a cutting-edge science approach for a more sustainable and efficient health system. In particular, one of the strategic research and technological development area,Health: Medical diagnosis and Therapeutics, involves cutting-edge research on advanced theranostic nanostructures, drug delivery systems, molecular diagnosis systems and chips, cell therapies, imaging solutions, biomolecular labels, synaptic process monitoring, etc. One of the aspects that stand out at INL is its infrastructure, which provides a high-tech research environment equipped with the latest technologies. It is especially worthwhile to mention the High Accuracy Labs, for nanocharacterization analysis, which provide an extremely low vibration and noise-shielded space for the most demanding characterization methods. INL has provided significant contributions in the provision of training actions such as: Graduate courses; Conferences and seminars; International workshops and International symposia. The laboratory has developed different training and research programmes in collaboration with national and international partners, which include collaboration programmes with Iberian universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for the training of PhD and Post-Doc researchers. INL has been involved in several European funded projects, three of them from the latest Horizon 2020 EC program.
This project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 686009