Jasmina Gacanin

Project Leader

Department of Synthesis of Macromolecules
Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research
+49 6131 379-311

0.506

Main Focus

Bioactive Hydrogels for Applications in Medicine and Health Care

Selected Publications

1. Gačanin, J., Synatschke, C. V., Weil, T., Biomedical Applications of DNA-Based Hydrogels. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2020, 30, 1906253. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.201906253

2. Gačanin, J., Hedrich, J., Sieste, S., Glaßer, G., Lieberwirth, I., Schilling, C., Fischer, S., Barth, H., Knöll, B., Synatschke, C. V., Weil, T., Autonomous Ultrafast Self‐Healing Hydrogels by pH‐Responsive Functional Nanofiber Gelators as Cell Matrices, Adv. Mater. 2019, 31, 1805044. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201805044

3. Marco Hebel, Andreas Riegger, Maksymilian M. Zegota, Gönül Kizilsavas, Jasmina Gačanin, Michaela Pieszka, Thorsten Lückerath, Jaime A. S. Coelho, Manfred Wagner, Pedro M. P. Gois, David Y. W. Ng, and Tanja Weil, Sequence Programming with Dynamic Boronic Acid/Catechol Binary Codes, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019, 141 (36), 14026-14031. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.9b03107

4. M. Pieszka, A. M. Sobota, J. Gačanin, T. Weil, D. Y. W. Ng, Orthogonally Stimulated Assembly/Disassembly of Depsipeptides by Rational Chemical Design, ChemBioChem 2019, 20, 1376. https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.201800781

5. Gačanin, J., Kovtun, A., Fischer, S., Schwager, V., Quambusch, J., Kuan, S. L., Liu, W., Boldt, F., Li, C., Yang, Z., Liu, D., Wu, Y., Weil, T., Barth, H., Ignatius, A., Spatiotemporally Controlled Release of Rho-Inhibiting C3 Toxin from a Protein–DNA Hybrid Hydrogel for Targeted Inhibition of Osteoclast Formation and Activity, Adv. Healthcare Mater. 2017, 6, 1700392. https://doi.org/10.1002/adhm.201700392

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Jasmina Gačanin studied Biochemistry at Ulm University, Germany, where she received her Bachelor’s (2013) and Master’s (2015) degrees as a scholarship holder of the “Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes”. She acquired her first research experiences working on the synthesis and investigation of morphological and transduction-promoting effects of self-assembling oligopeptides (Bachelor’s Thesis) and on supramolecular protein/peptide conjugates for therapeutic delivery (Master’s Thesis).

She continued her work in the group of Prof. Dr. Tanja Weil at Ulm University for her dissertation which she completed with summa cum laude in 2020. Her doctoral research focused on multifunctional hybrid hydrogels for medicinal applications such as tissue engineering and drug delivery employing various biomolecules such as proteins, peptides, and DNA to develop biohybrid hydrogels. Motivated by her early fascination about protein chemistry and inspired by the complex interplay of molecules in Nature, she continued her studies exploring the combination of the stability of covalent bonds with the dynamic behavior introduced by supramolecular chemistry. Thereby, grafting protein-derived backbones with supramolecular gelators of either DNA or nanofiber-forming peptides achieved outstanding material properties, making these gels highly attractive injectable cell scaffolds for regenerative medicine.

Since 2020, Jasmina Gačanin has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Dr. Tanja Weil at MPI-P, Mainz, Germany, as project responsible at the MPI-P, within the framework of a 3-year industrial cooperation on the BMBF project "Next Generation Injectable, Adaptive Hydrogels" (InGel-NxG, https://promatleben.de/de/projekte/projekte-alphabetisch/ingel-nxg/). In this cooperative project (TETEC AG, NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Tübingen, NMI Technologietransfer, HOT Screen; Hochschule Albstadt-Sigmaringen, and associated partners Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma and Vetter Pharma-Fertigung) a material platform is developed as novel treatment option for the local therapy of economically significant and individually burdensome conditions, such as inflammatory joint diseases. Therapeutic hydrogels based on human serum albumin (HSA) that can act as depot formulations for pharmaceutical molecules, with a local, controllable release featuring adjustable material properties, as well as simple and fast production are envisioned.

Awards

2011 Scholarship Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

2010 Karl-von-Frisch-Preis (VBiO - Verband Biologie, Biowissenschaften & Biomedizin in Deutschland, München)

2010 Scheffel-Preis (Literarische Gesellschaft, Karlsruhe)

Selected Recognitions

2021 SUPRABIO CONFERENCE 2021| Best Oral Communication: For the paper entitled "Supramolecular crosslinking: Advanced hydrogels for tissue engineering"

2020 Top 10% most downloaded papers 2018 - 2019: Advanced Materials; Gačanin et al., "Autonomous Ultra-Fast Self-Healing Hydrogels by pH-Responsive Functional Nanofiber Gelators as Cell Matrices"

2020 Top 10% most downloaded papers 2018 - 2019: Advanced Functional Materials; Gačanin et al., "Biomedical Applications of DNA-Based Hydrogels"

2020 Poster award #3 - Online Ceremony for 100 years polymer science and twitter poster session (GDCh)