Biography

Nádya Silveira is a Titular Professor at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS-Brazil). She is the Vice-Director of the Fuels Laboratory (UFRGS) and a University’s Superior Council (UFRGS) faculty member. Before her actual position, she served as director-president of the RS State Research Support Foundation (FAPERGS), as director of the UFRGS Chemistry Institute, and as a member of the international committee of the SIRIUS Synchrotron Facility (Campinas, Brazil). N. Silveira spent her Ph.D. at Bielefeld University, Germany, and her Post-doc at Grenoble Alpes University, France, and, more recently, she was a visiting Professor at Campinas University (UNICAMP-Brazil). In 2011 she received the FBPOL Award in Polymers.

She has around 120 publications, including book chapters and a patent. Among its collaborators are researchers from France, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, the USA, and several Brazilian researchers. As a member of the Brazilian Chemical Society, N. Silveira has also been working on policies to support Women in Science. Prof N. Silveira’s expertise has been focused during the last two decades on the preparation and characterization of biomacromolecules, liposomal composite systems, self-assemblies of carbohydrates and related polymers, and responsive microgels. More recently, N. Silveira’s projects have focused also on biotechnology.

Abstract

Over the past few decades, we have focused on researching starches and their properties. We have applied both enzymatic and chemical modifications to the starches and we prepare starch polymers with varying molecular weight distributions. However, fully characterizing the macromolecules is a challenge. Our interest lies in characterizing these polysaccharides and using them to create aqueous complexes with drugs, nanoparticles, and intelligent systems like microgels.

Our work involved obtaining information about the hierarchical porosity and crystallinity of starches after applying different treatment methods. We have also characterized starch polymers, revealing some interesting aspects of the molecular organization of amylose and amylopectin in aqueous or binary solutions, even for metal complexation. Additionally, amylose acetylation allowed us to prepare inclusion complexes with increased therapeutic efficiency and bioavailability of standard guest molecules. Furthermore, we have physically reorganized starch polymers into nanodomains and rearranged them as stable nanoparticles. Finally, we synthesized a starch-poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) hybrid microgel that led to the preparation of interesting thermosensitive microgels.

The most relevant results, obtained through MALDI-TOF/MS, X-ray methods, and polarized and depolarized Static and Dynamic Light Scattering experiments will be presented.

References

  1. Lacerda, L. D.; Silveira, N. P.; Boldam, A. F.; Hoffmann, J. F. Starch Gelatinization Behavior: The Impact of Granular Structure. Starch-Starke, 2024. DOI:10.1002/star.202300143.
  2. Zucatti, R.; Vailatti, A. D.; Leite, D. C.; Silveira, N. P. Acid Hydrolysis of Regular Corn Starch under External Electric Field. Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society 2019, 30 (12), 2567-2574. DOI: 10.21577/0103-5053.20190168.
  3. Lacerda, L. D. ; Leite, D. C.; Soares, M .D.; Silveira, N. P. Effects of α-amylase, amyloglucosidase, and their mixture on hierarchical porosity of rice strch. , Starch-Starke, v. 1, p. 1800008, 2018. DOI : 10.1002/star.201800008
  4. Leite, D. C. ; Kakorin, S., Heltle, Y. ; Hellweg, Th. ; Silveira, N.P. Smart Starch-Poly( N -isopropylacrylamide) Hybrid Microgels: Synthesis, Structure, and Swelling Behavior. Langmuir, v. 34, p. 10943-10954, 2018. DOI : 10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b00706
  5. Ribeiro, A. C.; Rocha, A.; Soares, R. M. D.; Fonseca, L. P.; da Silveira, N. P. Synthesis and characterization of acetylated amylose and development of inclusion complexes with rifampicin. Carbohydrate Polymers 2017, 157, 267-274, Article. DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2016.09.064.