Alicia Andreu Villas

Mrs. Alicia Andreu Villas

Department of Biocatalysis, Institute of Catalysis (CSIC), Marie Curie 2, Cantoblanco Campus UAM,Madrid 28049,Spain

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

7Years (2020-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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11 October 2023 in Catalysts
Verified
Journal Article
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AVAlicia Andreu Villas
Alicia Andreu Villas
MĆMarija Ćorović
Marija Ćorović
CGCarla Garcia-Sanz
Carla Garcia-Sanz
ASA. Sofia Santos
A. Sofia Santos
AMAna Milivojević
Ana Milivojević
Jose M PalomoJose M Palomo
Jose M Palomo
Enzymatic glycosylation is a versatile and sustainable biotechnological approach that plays a pivotal role in the production of bioactive compounds. This process involves the enzymatic transfer of sugar moieties onto various acceptor molecules, such as small molecules, peptides, or proteins, resulting in the synthesis of glycosides. These glycosides often exhibit enhanced bioactivity, improved solubility, and enhanced stability, making them valuable in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and the food industry. This review explores the diverse enzymatic glycosylation strategies employed in the synthesis of bioactive compounds. It highlights the enzymatic catalysts involved, including glycosyltransferases, glycosidases, glycophosphorylases, and glycosynthases. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of these biocatalysts in the stereoselective and regioselective synthesis of different types of glycosylated molecules, phenolic and aliphatic alcohols, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, glycoderivatives, glycopeptides, and glycoproteins with a clear focus on food and pharmaceutical chemistry. Furthermore, the review outlines various sources of sugar donors, activated glycosides, and sugar nucleotides, as well as the utilization of engineered enzymes and microorganisms for glycosylation reactions. The advantages of enzymatic glycosylation, including its high regioselectivity, stereoselectivity, and sustainability, are emphasized. Therefore, these approaches combining the use of different catalytic systems, the improvement of tools such as immobilization technology or chemical or genetic modification to improve the glycosylation process, could be useful tools in continuous biotechnological advancements.

30 October 2020 in Catalysts
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Journal Article
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NLNoelia Losada-Garcia
Noelia Losada-Garcia
Zaida CabreraZaida Cabrera
Zaida Cabrera
Paulina UrrutiaPaulina Urrutia
Paulina Urrutia
C-Carla García -Sanz
Carla García -Sanz
AVAlicia Andreu Villas
Alicia Andreu Villas
Jose M PalomoJose M Palomo
Jose M Palomo
Cascade reactions have been described as efficient and universal tools, and are of substantial interest in synthetic organic chemistry. This review article provides an overview of the novel and recent achievements in enzyme cascade processes catalyzed by multi-enzymatic or chemoenzymatic systems. The examples here selected collect the advances related to the application of the sequential use of enzymes in natural or genetically modified combination; second, the important combination of enzymes and metal complex systems, and finally we described the application of biocatalytic biohybrid systems on in situ catalytic solid-phase as a novel strategy. Examples of efficient and interesting enzymatic catalytic cascade processes in organic chemistry, in the production of important industrial products, such as the designing of novel biosensors or bio-chemocatalytic systems for medicinal chemistry application, are discussed

26 June 2021 in Nanomaterials
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Journal Article
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NLNoelia Losada-Garcia
Noelia Losada-Garcia
CGCarla Garcia-Sanz
Carla Garcia-Sanz
AVAlicia Andreu Villas
Alicia Andreu Villas
TVTrinidad Velasco-Torrijos
Trinidad Velasco-Torrijos
Jose M PalomoJose M Palomo
Jose M Palomo
Viruses are among the most infectious pathogens, responsible for the highest death toll around the world. Lack of effective clinical drugs for most viral diseases emphasizes the need for speedy and accurate diagnosis at early stages of infection to prevent rapid spread of the pathogens. Glycans are important molecules which are involved in different biological recognition processes, especially in the spread of infection by mediating virus interaction with endothelial cells. Thus, novel strategies based on nanotechnology have been developed for identifying and inhibiting viruses in a fast, selective, and precise way. The nanosized nature of nanomaterials and their exclusive optical, electronic, magnetic, and mechanical features can improve patient care through using sensors with minimal invasiveness and extreme sensitivity. This review provides an overview of the latest advances of functionalized glyconanomaterials, for rapid and selective biosensing detection of molecules as biomarkers or specific glycoproteins and as novel promising antiviral agents for different kinds of serious viruses, such as the Dengue virus, Ebola virus, influenza virus, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), influenza virus, Zika virus, or coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).

31 August 2023 in Preprints.org
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AVAlicia Andreu Villas
Alicia Andreu Villas
MĆMarija Ćorović
Marija Ćorović
CGCarla Garcia-Sanz
Carla Garcia-Sanz
ASA. Sofia Santos
A. Sofia Santos
AMAna Milivojević
Ana Milivojević
Jose M PalomoJose M Palomo
Jose M Palomo
Some of the most recent advances in enzymatic glycosylation processes focused on the production of important bioactive compounds have been analyzed. The applicability of different enzymes such as glycosidases, glycosyltransferases, glycophosphorylases and glycosynthases have been de-scribed around the review article considering their advantages and disadvantages of these biocat-alysts in the stereoselective and regioselective synthesis of different types of glycosylated mole-cules, phenolic and aliphatic alcohols, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, glycoderivatives, glyco-peptides and glycoproteins with a clear focus on food and pharmaceutical chemistry. Therefore, these approaches combining the use of different catalytic systems, the improvement of tools such as immobilization technology, or chemical or genetic modification to improve the synthesization in the glycosylation process could be a very useful tool in a continuous biotechnological advance.

17 April 2024 in ChemRxiv
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CGCarla Garcia-Sanz
Carla Garcia-Sanz
AVAlicia Andreu Villas
Alicia Andreu Villas
MPMirosława Pawlyta
Mirosława Pawlyta
AVAna Vukoičić
Ana Vukoičić
AMAna Milivojević
Ana Milivojević
Jose M PalomoJose M Palomo
Jose M Palomo
Laccase is an oxidase of great industrial interest due to its ability to catalyse oxidation processes of phenols and persistent organic pollutants. However, it is susceptible to denaturation at high temperatures, sensitive to pH and in the presence of high concentrations of solvents, which is a problem for industrial use. To solve this problem, this work develops the synthesis in aqueous medium of a new Mn metalloenzyme with laccase oxidase mimetic catalytic activity. To do this, Geobacillus thermocatenulatus lipase (GTL) is used as a "scaffold" enzyme, which is mixed with a manganese salt at 50ºC in an aqueous medium. This produces in situ formation of manganese (IV) oxide nanowires that interact with the enzyme, obtaining the GTL-Mn bionanohybrid. On the other hand, its oxidative activity was evaluated using the ABTS assay, obtaining a catalytic efficiency 300 times greater than the laccase from Trametes versicolor. These new Mn-metalloenzyme turned out to be 2 times more stable at 40 ºC, 3 times more stable in the presence of 10% acetonitrile and 10 times more stable at 20% acetonitrile than laccase Novozym 51003®. Furthermore, the site-selective immobilized GTL-Mn showed much higher stability then the soluble form. Oxidase-like activity of these Mn-metalloenzyme was successfully performed against other substrates such as L-DOPA or phloridzin in oligomerization reactions.

19 May 2021 in Molecules
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JBJana Brabcova
Jana Brabcova
AVAlicia Andreu Villas
Alicia Andreu Villas
DRDavid Aguilera Rodríguez
David Aguilera Rodríguez
Zaida CabreraZaida Cabrera
Zaida Cabrera
BRBlanca de Las Rivas
Blanca de Las Rivas
Jose M PalomoJose M Palomo
Jose M Palomo
Different materials containing carboxylic groups have been functionalized with geranyl-amine molecules by using an EDC/NHS strategy. Chemical modification of the support was confirmed by XRD, UV-spectrophotometer, and FT-IR. This geranyl-functionalized material was successfully applied for four different strategies of site-selective immobilization of proteins at room temperature and aqueous media. A reversible hydrophobic immobilization of proteins (lipases, phosphoglucosidases, or tyrosinase) was performed in neutral pH in yields from 40 to >99%. An increase of the activity in the case of lipases was observed from a range of 2 to 4 times with respect to the initial activity in solution. When chemically or genetically functionalized cysteine enzymes were used, the covalent immobilization, via a selective thiol-alkene reaction, was observed in the presence of geranyl support at pH 8 in lipases in the presence of detergent (to avoid the previous hydrophobic interactions). Covalent attachment was confirmed with no release of protein after immobilization by incubation with hydrophobic molecules. In the case of a selenium-containing enzyme produced by the selenomethionine pathway, the selective immobilization was successfully yielded at acidic pH (pH 5) (89%) much better than at pH 8. In addition, when an azido-enzyme was produced by the azide–homoalanine pathway, the selective immobilization was successful at pH 6 and in the presence of CuI for the click chemistry reaction.