I’m a 3rd year Ph.D. student in Molecular Sciences at the department of Chemical Sciences of the University of Padova (Italy) under the supervision of Prof. Cristina Peggion. My Ph.D. project is cofounded by the European Union and I.R.A. – Istituto di Ricerche Applicate, a company based in Usmate- Velate (Monza-Brianza, Italy) that specializes in contract manufacture of pharmaceuticals and cosmetic.

My research is focused on peptide functionalization of polysaccharide for the development of wound healing dressings. More specifically, I follow two main research lines. The first aims to develop wound dressings with multiple functionalities, based on cotton and covalently bound antimicrobial and collagen regenerative peptides (1). The second is performed at I.R.A. – Istituto di Ricerche Applicate and studies methods to enhance the anti-inflammatory properties of hyaluronic acid by functionalizing it with peptides.

Thanks to the support of the EPS mobility fellowship, from September 2024 to March 2025 I spent a research period in Porto (Portugal), divided between the Faculty of Sciences and the i3S – Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde of the University of Porto, under the supervision of Prof. Paula Gomes and Prof. Cristina Martins. Their research groups have been studying peptide-grafted biomaterials for many years (2-4), and involved me in two projects that merged our expertise.

The aim of the first project was to bind an antimicrobial peptide and a collagen boosting one to chitosan. In fact, previous work from the Gomes’s group demonstrated that an hybrid antimicrobial-collagen boosting peptide (5) maintains the properties of both parent peptides, and we wanted evaluate whether chitosan could be used as a bridge between two peptides, while creating a double functionalized material. To do so, two different chemoselective ligations were employed: the thiazolidine (1) and the cupper catalyzed azide-alkyne (2). The binding resulted successful and the preliminary antimicrobial tests on functionalized chitosan gave encouraging results.

The second project involved the binding of PMAP-36(12-24) (6) to cotton by the thiolene reaction (3). PMAP- 36(12-24) is a broad spectrum antimicrobial peptide that we previously bound to cotton by thiazolidine bond and that resulted in an antimicrobial material (7). Also in this case, the reactions were successful and we are working on the antimicrobial tests.

During this internship in Portugal I had the chance to visit and work in the laboratories of two research groups that are expert in the synthesis of peptides and their grafting to form biomaterials. This allowed me to gain practical experience out of my area of expertise. In particular, I practiced different types of binding reactions, learned to spin coat and assisted in the antimicrobial tests of my materials. Beside the experimental work, I had the opportunity to participate to the XIX Iberian Peptide Meeting in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and present my research.

I would like to express my gratitude to the European Peptide Society for funding my research period in Portugal and to Prof. Paula Gomes, and Prof. Cristina Martins for hosting me and making me feel very welcomed. I would also like to thank Dr. Ana Gomes for all the help in the lab, and the fruitful scientific discussions. To conclude, I encourage all the young scientists to take advantage of the opportunity that the EPS mobility fellowship offers, and go abroad to do more peptide science!

References

1. Albini, F., Biondi, B., Lastella, L. & Peggion, C. Oxime and thiazolidine chemoselective ligation reactions: a green method for cotton functionalization. Cellulose, 1-15 (2023).
2. Barbosa, M., Vale, N., Costa, F. M., Martins, M. C. L. & Gomes, P. Tethering antimicrobial peptides onto chitosan: Optimization of azide-alkyne “click” reaction conditions. Carbohydrate polymers 165, 384-393 (2017).
3. Alves, P. M. et al. Thiol–norbornene photoclick chemistry for grafting antimicrobial peptides onto chitosan to create antibacterial biomaterials. ACS Applied Polymer Materials 4, 5012-5026 (2022).
4. Barbosa, M. et al. Antimicrobial coatings prepared from Dhvar-5-click-grafted chitosan powders. Acta Biomaterialia 84, 242-256 (2019).
5. Gomes, A. et al. Turning a Collagenesis-Inducing Peptide Into a Potent Antibacterial and Antibiofilm Agent Against Multidrug-Resistant Gram-Negative Bacteria. Frontiers in Microbiology 10 (2019).
6. Biondi, B. et al. Structural and biological characterization of shortened derivatives of the cathelicidin PMAP-36. Scientific reports (2023).
7. Albini, F. et al. Sequence optimizaion of cathelicidin PMAP-36 for protease resistance and grafting on cotton-based wound dressings. XIX Iberian Peptide Meeting Poster (2025).