On Sunday, Dave Haddleton was presented with an award for “recognition of outstanding service and contribution to the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing” at the RSC Editors Symposium banquet at the Guildhall in London. The award was given for service on the Board of “Chem Comm”, and for being Editor in Chief – and launching – “Polymer Chemistry”.

The GibsonGroup's latest research into the use of biomaterials to increase the availability of donor cells has been published in Angewandte Chemie. Donor cells (e.g blood, bone marrow) are crucial to modern healthcare but due to their short shelf life they must be frozen using organic solvents as 'antifreezes'. The Gibson group has pionnered the use of synthetic polymers which inhibit ice crystal growth and their application to cryopreservation. In this work, a collaboraiton with Prof. Steve Armes at Sheffield, the team used biomimetic block copolymer micelles to provide a hydrated 'matrix' around the cells, which in combination with ice inhibiting polymers enable succesful cryopreservation of red blood cells. This is the first example of a cryopreservation system using entirely synthetic polymer materials, providing control and additional functionality into the system. Post-thawing, the micelles warm up, and become 'worm-like' which enabled the direct formation of a hydrogel, which is of interest for tissue engineering.

Read the paper here

Combining Biomimetic Block Copolymer Worms with an Ice-Inhibiting Polymer for the Solvent-Free Cryopreservation of Red Blood Cells

Professor Rachel O'Reilly has received (8th December) the 2014 McBain Medal. This was awarded for her pioneering research in novel polymeric nanoparticles, responsive materials and controlled self-assembly. Read more about her groups work here

A Warwick Chemistry undergraduate researcher, Bethany Dean has won an award to allow her to travel to Australia (!) to attend the ICUR undergraduate reserach conference . She will present the work she conducted in the GibsonGroup on understanding how synthetic polymers affect ice nucleation - A process which is still not understood despite its obvious important in process from cloud formation, to cryopreservation to making ice cream!

Read her paper on this topic here (with another undergrad student, Jamie Kasperczak-Wright);

Congdon, T., Dean, B.T., Kasperczak-Wright, J., Biggs, C.I., Notman, R., Gibson, M.I., 2015, Biomacromolecules, Probing the Biomimetic Ice Nucleation Inhibition Activity of Poly(vinyl alcohol) and Comparison to Synthetic and Biological Polymers

A recent paper by the GibsonGroup in Chem Commun has been highlighted in the RSC Magazine 'Chemistry World'. The Gibson Group have a research program focussed on mimicking the function of Antifreeze Proteins which are found in Polar fish species. These proteins can slow the rate of ice growth, which has been identified as a challenge in the cryopreservation of donor cells and tissue for transplantation. In this work they showed a facile route to new cryoprotective polymers, using cheap, commodity polymer starting materials. These polymers were shown to have ice growth inhibition activity and to signficantly reduce the ice-induced damage during red blood cell freeze/thaw storage. In a second paper, the group also reported signficantly enhanced cryopreservation using poly(vinyl alcohol).

Read the Chemistry World article here

Read the Chemical Communications article here; Rational, yet simple, design and synthesis of an antifreeze-protein inspired polymer for cellular cryopreservation

Read our recent ACS Biomaterials Science and Enginneering paper here Glycerol Free Cryopreservation of Red Blood Cells Enabled by Ice Recrystallization Inhibiting Polymers

Dr Matthew Gibson has been awarded the 2015 'PAT Young Talent Award' during the 13th Polymers for Advanced Technologies conference in HongZhou, China. The award is sponsered by Wiley and Polymers for Advanced Technologies and also ACS Materials and Interfaces. Matt was selected by a panel following lectures from the shortlisted candidates from around the world, after being nominated.

At the Chemistry Departments annual postgraduate symposium, Robert Deller (GibsonGroup) and Athina anastasaki (HaddletonGroup) won the prizes for the best PhD Theses. The Thesis prize is Sponsored by the Faculty of Science.

The Bugg and Gibson groups are involved in 2 new projects intended to promote translation of new technologies. These projects are funded by the Industrial Biocatalyst program supported by Innovate UK, BBSRC and EPSRC and span a range of UK universities and companies.

Dave Haddleton has recently been given the PTN (Polymer Technology Netherlands) 2015 “Medema Award”.

The annual prize is awarded to prolific polymer scientists who interact, or have close ties, with polymer research in the Netherlands. The award is named after the late PTN chairman, Dick Medema, who was the former R&D director at Shell.

The list of previous award winners can be found at: http://www.ptn.nu/award/index.htm.

Dr Matthew Gibson has been awarded the RSC/Dextra Medal for Carbohydrate Science. This award, which is sponsored by Dextra Laboratories, was founded in 1970. It is presented to a scientist in the early/mid stage of their career for meritorious work in carbohydrate chemistry that has largely been conducted in the UK.

Matt will present a lecture, and recieve the medal at the joint RSc/COST MultiglycoNano Meeting in Bangor, Wales, in April.

To read more about the GibsonGroup's research visit their webpage.

3 Academics in the Department have been awarded prestigious ERC starting grants with a total value of almost €5 million. Set up in 2007 by the EU, the European Research Council (ERC) is the first pan-European funding organisation for frontier research. It aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age.

Dr Adrian Chaplin will develop new synthetic methodology for studying the interaction of alkanes with transition metals.
Dr Matthew Gibson will study mimics of antifreeze (glyco)proteins with the aim of improving cell cryopreservation.
Dr Józef Lewandowski will develop and apply approaches to investigate structural dynamics of large protein complexes by solid- and solution-state NMR.

These awards bring the total number of ERC-funded researches in the Department to 8, a clear testament to the internationally-leading nature of the research environment at Warwick.

prof. Stefan Bon, in collaboration with prof. To Ngai from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has edited a book published by the Royal Society of Chemistry entitled Particle-Stabilized Emulsions and Colloids: Formation and Applications. The book contains the latest scientific developments and key understandings of Pickering stabilization, a phenomenon whereby solid particles adhere to soft deformable interfaces for example emulsion droplets. Applications in areas of polymer chemistry, food, and oil processing are elucidated. A selection of internationally leading scientists have contributed with individual chapters. The book is available to buy now.