Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers with an increasing incidence due to a lack ofearly-stage diagnostics and effective treatment [1]. The RAS/RAF/ MAPK/CDK4 pathway is frequentlydysregulated in pancreatic cancer and CDK4 constitutes an attractive target since several drugs havebeen approved by the FDA to inhibit its activity: Abemaciclib, Ribociclib and Palbociclib [2,3] (Figure1) However these inhibitors are not efficient in monotherapy and have only been approved for breastcancer. In order to propose an efficient therapeutic strategy to target CDK4 in pancreatic cancer, wepropose to deliver Abemaciclib using carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes are promising materials for nanomedicine applications and especially fordrug delivery. [4] In this project, we adsorb Abemaciclib onto single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT)for delivery of the drug into pancreatic cancer cells. In order to study adsorption, we investigate thechanges in the optical signatures of SWNTs in the near-infrared (NIR) by coupling NIR absorption,photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopies. [5] Typical kinetic spectroscopic results, assigned tothe adsorption of Abemaciclib on SWNT, dispersed in water using carbomethylcellulose (CMC), arepresented in Figure 2. We discuss the results in terms of changes of the dielectric environment of thenanotubes, leading to modulation of their excitonic and optical properties. We have furtherinvestigated the inhibitory potential of SWNT-Abemaciclib on proliferation of PANC1 cells comparedto Abemaciclib alone and have determined the toxicthreshold of SWNT dispersed in CMC.

Poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) is a thermo-responsive polymer which undergoes a reversible coil-to-globule transition in water at temperatures close to the human body temperature [1]. Consequently, PNIPAM-based microgels show a volume phase transition (VPT) under heating. Photo-responsive hybrid microgels have been prepared by incorporating gold nanoparticles in PNIPAM microgels [2]. The outstanding photo-thermal and optical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) make them promising candidates to prepare multi-responsive hybrid microgels. However, no thorough studies have been reported so far.
In this work, we report the preparation and properties of aqueous dispersions of PNIPAM/SWNTs hybrid microgels (Figure 1a). We study their structure by transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering. We investigate their optical properties and changes when heated at the VPT by near infrared (NIR) absorption, Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies [3]. Furthermore, we use optical microscopy (Figure 1b), light scattering and NIR Raman/PL spectroscopy to show that the VPT transition can be triggered by NIR photo-thermal excitation.

We present a phase-shifting digital holographic microscopy technique, where a digital micromirror device enables to perform a precise phase-only shift of the reference wave. By coupling the beam into a monomode fiber, we obtain a laser mode with a constant phase shift, equally acting on all pixels of the hologram. This method has the advantage of being relatively simple and compatible with high frame rate cameras, which makes it of great interest for the observation of fast phenomena. We demonstrate the validity of the technique in an off-axis configuration by imaging living paramecia caudata.

The origin of the unique rheological properties of gluten, the water-insoluble protein fraction of wheat, is crucial in bread-making processes and questions scientists since decades. Gluten is a complex mixture of monomeric and polymeric proteins. To better understand the supramolecular structure of gluten and its link to the material properties, we develop and characterize model gluten using a combination of rheology, biochemistry and scattering techniques. In this framework, we investigate the linear and non-linear viscoelastic properties of samples produced by the dispersion of gluten proteins in a solvent. We vary the quality of the solvent (various water/ethanol mixtures), the protein concentration, and the protein composition, which we finely control thanks to a novel protocol based on a liquid-liquid phase separation. We show that the complex viscoelasticity of the gels exhibits concentration/aging time/solvent composition superposition principles, demonstrating the self-similarity of the gels produced in different conditions. All gels can be regarded as near critical gels with characteristic rheological parameters, elastic plateau, and characteristic relaxation time, which are related to one another, as a consequence of self-similarity, and span several orders of magnitude when changing the parameters. Structural features probed by X-ray, neutron and light scattering experiments provide a quantitatively consistent physical picture and of near-criticality and provide crucial molecular clues of the role of intramolecular H-bonds in the gelation process. Non-linear rheology, as probed by shear start-up experiments, is also intimately related to the sample structural features.

Food transition requires the replacement in human diet of animal-based proteins by alternative sources of proteins including plant-based proteins. This calls for a detailed knowledge of the functional properties of plant-based proteins, including their surface activity. In this framework, we provide here a comparative study of the interfacial properties of two plant proteins, extracted respectively from wheat and sunflower. We combine time- and concentration-dependent measurements of the surface tension and the surface rheology, as measured with a pendant-drop set-up, and of the surface excess concentration, as measured by ellipsometry, of plant protein interfacial films. We demonstrate a time-concentration superposition principle for the surface pressure and surface excess concentration, showing that the kinetics for the building of the interfacial films is essentially governed by the diffusion of the proteins from the bulk to the interface. We find that the rheological and structural properties of the interfacial protein films show markedly different behaviors for the two classes of protein, which is encoded in the structural features of the individual proteins: wheat proteins are more surface active than sunflower proteins, are keen to compress and re-arrange at an air-water interface, whereas sunflower proteins do not. This work provides qualitative and quantitative analysis of the comparative interfacial behavior of flexible and rigid plant proteins extracted respectively from wheat and sunflower, and demonstrates that a combination of several experimental techniques is necessary to obtain insightful information on the interfacial properties of any species.