News

Congratulations to Sam Lawton who has just won this year's Young Persons' Lecture Competition.

Sponsored by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, with support from The Worshipful Company of Armourers & Brasiers, the Young Persons' Lecture Competition invites students and professionals up to the age of 28 to deliver a short lecture on a materials, minerals, mining, packaging, clay technology and wood science related subject.

There were three rounds to the competition: the regional heats, regional finals, and the national finals which took place on 25 April, and Sam wins a prize of £750 and a trip to South Africa to compete in the world finals.

Sam is a final year PhD student under the supervision of Prof Dave Haddleton, and is currently working on developing new materials for the next generation of solar cells.

Congratulations to Dr Matthew Jenner, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry, who has been awarded a BBSRC Future Leader Fellowship.

Full press release here

Peptide-mimetic metallohelices bind Alzheimer protein and extend life in an insect model

Nature Chemistry has recently published research, led by Professor Peter Sadler, that has developed a new line of attack against cancer: an organic-osmium compound, which is triggered using a non-toxic dose of sodium formate, a natural product found in many organisms, including nettles and ants.

Named JPC11, it targets a metabolic process which cancer cells rely on to survive and multiply. It does this by converting a key substance used by cancer cells to provide the energy they need for rapid division (pyruvate) into an unnatural lactate - leading to the cells’ destruction.

For the full press release see here.

Research published today in Nature Communications shows how high photoconductivity and semiconductor behaviour can be added to MOFs - which already have a huge international focus for their applications in gas storage, sensing and catalysis.

The new work, conducted by Universities in Brazil, the United Kingdom and France – including researchers at Warwick’s Department of Chemistry - found that the new MOF has a photoresponsivity of 2.5 × 10⁵ A.W^-1

The work has been highlighted in a press release.

Research led by the Hatton group in collaboration with researchers from Warwick Physics, published in Nature Communications, advances the possibility of using copper nanoparticles for emerging electronic devices in place of more costly silver and gold nanoparticles.

The full open access article can be found here:

http://rdcu.be/z5Ly

Figure shows a high resolution transmission electron microscope image of a ligand capped copper nanoparticle, showing the crystal lattice and individual copper atoms surrounding the nanoparticle.

For the full article in ChemistryViews.org, see below:

http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/10703391/Photoactive_Iridium_Complexes_for_Cancer_Therapy.html

Dr Gabit Nurumbetov, Principal Scientist at Medherant Ltd - a spin-out of the University of Warwick which produces next-generation drug delivery patches - has invented a revolutionary device for testing transdermal drugs more quickly, efficiently and accurately. Dr Nurumbetov completed his PhD in the Department of Chemistry with Professor Stefan Bon then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Professor David Haddleton’s group.

https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/warwick_grad_invents

The GibsonGroup report in Angewandte Chemie a new macromolecular ‘antifreeze’ which improves the cryopreservation of cells

Timur Avkiran, a postgraduate researcher in the Department of Chemistry, has been awared an Industrial Fellowship by The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to design and synthesise small molecule drugs for improving Tuberculosis treatment.

Sir John Warcup Cornforth was a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who was born a century ago (7 September 1917).

Sir John was known for his work in the field of stereochemistry, the study of how the spatial arrangement of atoms affects the properties of a chemical compound. He went on to study at the University of Oxford and work as a professor at the universities of Warwick, Suffolk and California in Los Angeles.

In celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday, Sir John has been honoured with a Google Doodle.

For more information, see the original article in The Daily Telegraph.