Izar Schaerf, visiting MSc student from Heidelberg University, lead a project aiming to develop a new method for the purification of peptide- and protein-functionalised nanostructures. Being able to easily and consistently purify nanostructures decorated with biologics is crucial to our work so we are very excited to see this paper out! Special thanks to the group of Viktorija Glembockyte at Heidelberg, who validated our method with their complex nanostructures. Read it here:

Anna and Ioanna write a highlight on our work on fusogenic liposomes and their interactions with Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, published in Volume 42 of Advances in Biomembranes and Lipid Self-Assembly . Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.abl.2025.07.006

Today we are welcoming three new lab members, Yomna Gabr, who will be studying for a PhD on macro DNA origami arrays, Yuening Su, who will be studying for a PhD on the selective targeting of activated platelets and John Wang, who will be studying for an MPhil on the targeted delivery of novel antimicrobial compounds. Lovely to have you in the lab, all!

On the 5th July, Ioanna gave a talk at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition on "Can origami made of DNA help us kill superbugs". It was a fun day with audience members of all ages - thank you to the lab members, current and old that attended!

It’s (not) away day time again! On the 26th June, we spent a day at  Emmanuel College, Cambridge , discussing the lab’s progress on  DNA nanotechnology  for  drug delivery  and on  aptamer   selection for bacterial and mammalian targets. Very excited to see projects coming together and everyone’s hard work coming to fruition! This year, we were again very lucky to have with us visitors to the lab: Manon Libotte, PhD student at the University of Bologna, Italy; Bianca Greul,

Anna and Ioanna write a protocol on targeting bacteria with DNA nanostructures for the third edition of DNA Nanotechnology - Methods and Protocols, published by Springer Nature and edited by Professor Giampaolo Zuccheri, University of Bologna. Read it here: https://link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007/978-1-0716-4394-5_8

We attended the Physics of Life 2025 Conference in Harrogate, on March 24-27. A huge well done to Yuening, Celeste, Zoya, Federico and Maria on their poster presentations! Looking forward to Physics of Life 2027!

Ioanna delivers the 2024 Judith Howard Prize lecture at the Biophysical Sciences Institute, Durham University. It was a big honour and brilliant to interact with everyone on the day. A big thank you to the organisers!

We attended the 2024 British Society for Nanomedicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge! Well done to Anna and Maria for their talks and to Federico and Tim for their Poster presentations. Special congratulations to Anna for her Best Talk Prize and to Tim for his poster that was Highly Commended!

It was great to be again in beautiful Kyoto, discuss lots of exciting biophysics and meet old friends and collaborators Dr Yuki Suzuki and Dr Oliver Vanderpoorten!

We are very pleased to see this collaborative work with the Laser Analytics Group published! We characterise the interactions of cationic fusogenic liposomes with Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterial targets. Congratulations to Anna for leading this project and revealing these exciting interaction mechanisms! Read it here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.3c11463

We are delighted that a second Royal Society International Exchanges grant has been awarded to the lab. This time, we will work with Professor Alessandro Podesta, form the Department of Physics, University of Milan, Italy, to investigate the use of advanced microscopy techniques, (AFM and super-resolution) to investigate cancer-associated microbiome markers in breast cancer.