Víctor F. Puntes

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia & Vall d'Hebron Institut de Recerca

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Born in Barcelona, 1970, Prof. Víctor Franco Puntes studied chemical engineering at the Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France) and chemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), graduating in 1994. He obtained his PhD in Physics at the University of Barcelona (1998), working on Giant Magnetoresistance in granular alloys. Then he spent more than 3 years in Berkeley (California, USA) as a postdoc, first in the group of Prof. Krishnan Kannan (National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and then in the group of Prof. Paul Alivisatos (College of Chemistry, UC Berkeley). In 2003 he obtained a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship and worked in the Physics Dep. at the University of Barcelona. In 2005, he moves to the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology (ICN - now ICN2) as ICREA Research Professor and creates the Inorganic Nanoparticles Group. Since December 2014 he holds a double affiliation ICN2 and VHIR.


Research interests

Prof. Víctor Puntes works on the synthesis, characterisation and applications of engineered inorganic nanoparticles (NPs). By controlling the size, structure and shape of the inorganic core, and manipulating the linking of organic molecules to the nanoparticle surface, the group aims to design nanoparticles that interact with a variety of systems (biological, medical, materials, etc.). This allows for the deliberate modification of these systems, or the use of NPs for witnessing and reporting things.

Selected publications

– E Casals, MF Gusta, M Cobaleda-Siles, A Garcia-Sanz & VF Puntes 2017, ‘Cancer resistance to treatment and antiresistance tools offered by multimodal multifunctional nanoparticles‘, Cancer Nanotechnology vol.8 no.1, 7-12.

– Garcia-Fernandez L, Garcia-Pardo J, Tort O, Prior I, Brust M, Casals E, Lorenzo J & Puntes VF 2017, ‘Conserved effects and altered trafficking of Cetuximab antibodies conjugated to gold nanoparticles with precise control of their number and orientation’, Nanoscale, 9, 18, 6111 – 6121.

– B Pelaz et al. 2017. ‘Diverse applications of nanomedicine‘ ACS nano , vol. 11, no.3, pp. 2313-2381.

– A Genç, J Patarroyo, J Sancho-Parramon, NG Bastús, V Puntes & J Arbiol 2017, ‘Hollow metal nanostructures for enhanced plasmonics: synthesis, local plasmonic properties and applications‘, Nanophotonics,  vol.6, no. 1, pp.193-213

– Fantechi E, Roca AG, Sepulveda B, Torruella P, Estrade S, Peiro F, Coy E, Jurga S, Bastus NG, Nogues J & Puntes V 2017, ‘Seeded Growth Synthesis of Au-Fe3O4 Heterostructured Nanocrystals: Rational Design and Mechanistic Insights’, Chemistry Of Materials, vol.29, no.9, pp.4022 – 4035.

– Barbero F,  Russo L, Vitali M, Piella J, Salvo I, Borrajo ML, Busquets-Fite M, Grandori R, Bastus NG, Casals E & Puntes V 2017, ‘Formation of the Protein Corona: The Interface between Nanoparticles and the Immune System’, Seminars In Immunology, 34, C, 52 – 60.


Selected research activities

– Chairman International Conference on Nanomedicien and Nanobiotechnology ICONAN 2017 Barcelona

– Chariman Spinning of under RRI Principles, 300 hours lectures for phD fellows of ITN-PANDORA- H2020

– Award for BiogasPLUS, Boosting biogas production with iron oxide Nanoparticles, 2017 WORLD BIOGAS ASSOCIATION

– Thermoshot, Multimodal strategies based on nanoparticles to fight antibiotic multiresistent bacteria. CAIXA IMPULSE