News

Fabienne Bachtiger, part of the Sosso group, presented her research to dozens of politicians and a panel of expert judges, as part of the poster competition STEM for BRITAIN, on Monday 9th March in the House of Commons. The competition was strong but she won a Silver award for the excellence of her chemistry research, walking away with a £1,250 prize and medal.

Congratulations to Fabienne Bachtinger who has been selected to display her poster at the House of Commons as part of the Chemistry session of STEM for BRITAIN 2020.

If Fabienne wins the medal for best poster in her subject session she would become eligible to win the Westminster Medal for the overall winner.

Fingers crossed Fabienne!

Chemistry World Today highlights Shipman Group Research into 'Synthetic strategy exploits fluxional nitrogen to deliver three chiral centres for the price of one'

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/synthetic-strategy-exploits-fluxional-nitrogen-to-deliver-three-chiral-centres-for-the-price-of-one/4011029.article

Professor Matthew Gibson has been awarded a prestigious €2M ERC consolidator grant for his work on new materials to help transport protein and cell-based therapies. The project ICE_PACK will support a cross disciplinary team of researchers based in both the Chemistry Department and also in Warwick Medical School.

Professor Matthew Gibson has been awarded a prestigious €2M ERC consolidator grant for his work on new materials to help transport protein and cell-based therapies. The project ICE_PACK will support a cross disciplinary team of researchers based in both the Chemistry Department and also in Warwick Medical School.

Build a magical castle or set off an eternal winter? Maybe not...but scientists @warwickuni are working on some very exciting projects at very low temperatures.

Are you worried about what our future will look like? Is plastic good or bad? Are electric vehicles actually going to save our planet? Come and join us at Our Green Future to find answers to all these questions.

The forum will focus on 'Clean Transport', 'Plastics with Potential' and 'Food of the Future' and will host a large number of industry leaders and academics to address the topical issue of climate change. Tickets have just been released! First 250 tickets include a free travel mug so that you can also help fight against the human impact on climate change. All money from tickets will be donated to charities fighting against climate change. Tickets are available here: https://www.warwicksu.com/events/4097/18103/

The end of reapplying sunscreen could be on the horizon after scientists found a molecule which can ‘dance’ away the harmful sunlight.

Plants stay safe from the Sun because they hold a molecule which absorbs ultraviolet light and uses the energy to shake at a speed of 100 billion twists per second, which expends the radiation before it can cause harm.

Scientists at the University of Warwick searched for a structure with similar properties and discovered that diethyl sinapate closely mimics the process when exposed to sunlight.

• The pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii is one of three highest priority pathogens identified by WHO (World Health Organisation) for which new antibiotics are urgently needed
• Understanding the enzymes that assemble antibiotics which can kill the pathogen is key to altering their structures to target the pathogen more effectively

Researchers at the University of Warwick have made a breakthrough in understanding the functions and structures of key enzymes in the assembly of an antibiotic with activity against the pathogen, which could enable more effective versions to be created

For the full article, see here.

Freezing cells made safer thanks to new polymer made at University of Warwick

 

- A new polymer that’s a cryoprotectant dramatically improves the freezing of cells has been discovered by researchers at the University of Warwick

- The new polymers can reduce the amount of organic solvent required in cryopreservation (freezing cells) as well as giving more and healthier cells after thawing

- Findings may help reduce cost and improve distribution of cells for cell-based therapies, diagnostics and research

 

Cell freezing (cryopreservation) – which is essential in cell transfusions as well as basic biomedical research – can be dramatically improved using a new polymeric cryoprotectant, discovered at the University of Warwick, which reduces the amount of ‘anti-freeze’ needed to protect cells.

 

The ability to freeze and store cells for cell-based therapies and research has taken a step forward in the paper ‘A synthetically scalable poly(ampholyte) which dramatically Enhances Cellular Cryopreservation.’ published by the University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry and Medical School in the journal Biomacromolecules. The new polymer material protects the cells during freezing, leading to more cells being recovered and less solvent-based antifreeze being required.

 

Cryopreservation of cells is an essential process, enabling banking and distribution of cells, which would otherwise degrade. The current methods rely on adding traditional ‘antifreezes’ to the cells to protect them from the cold stress, but not all the cells are recovered and it is desirable to lower the amount of solvent added.

 

The new Warwick material was shown to allow cryopreservation using less solvent. In particular, the material was very potent at protecting cell monolayers – cells which are attached to a surface, which is the format of how they are grown and used in most biomedical research.

 

Having more, and better quality cells, is crucial not just for their use in medicine, but to improve the quality and accessibility of cells for the discovery of new drugs for example.

 

Cell-based therapies are emerging as the “fourth pillar” of chemo-therapy. New methods to help distribute and bank these cells will help make them more accessible and speed up their roll-out, and this new material may aid this process.

 

Professor Matthew Gibson who holds a joint appointment between the Department of Chemistry and Warwick Medical School comments:

 

“Cryopreservation is fundamental to so much modern bioscience and medicine, but we urgently need better methods to meet the needs of advanced cell-based therapies. Our new material is easy to scale up, which is essential if this is to be widely used, and we found it to be very protective for several cell lines. The simplicity of our approach will hopefully help us translate this to real applications quickly, and make an impact in healthcare and basic research.”

 

ENDS

 

29 JULY 2019

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

 

High-res image available at:

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/july2019/mg_cells.jpg

 

Credit: University of Warwick. Caption: The cells frozen with the polymer (left) and without the polymer (right)

 

Paper available to view at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.biomac.9b00681

 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 2476 574 255 or +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk

For the full article, see here.

For job opportunity, see here.