News

Researchers at the University of Warwick have worked with Coventry-based Medherant, a Warwick spinout company, to produce and patent the World’s first ever ibuprofen patch delivering the drug directly through skin to exactly where it is needed at a consistent dose rate.

Part of the work was carried out by Matt Donald in a 2015 URSS project funded by the Materials GRP and also started as a URSS project in 2014 carried out by Matt Beech, both currently Yr 4 undergraduates.

They have invented a transparent adhesive patch that can consistently deliver a prolonged high dose of the painkiller ibuprofen directly through the skin. The University of Warwick researchers and Medherant have found a way to incorporate significant amounts of the drug (up to 30% weight) into the polymer matrix that sticks the patch to the patient’s skin with the drug then being delivered at a steady rate over up to 12 hours. This opens the way for the development of a range of novel long-acting over-the-counter pain relief products which can be used to treat common painful conditions like chronic back pain, neuralgia and arthritis without the need to take potentially damaging doses of the drug orally. Although there are a number of popular ibuprofen gels available these make it difficult to control dosage and are inconvenient to apply.

The Jones group, in collaboration with Imperial College London, publish a study investigating the effects of polar ferroelectric surfaces on the growth of organic semiconductor thin films in The Journal of Materials Chemistry C.

A recent report has concluded that the experimental sciences of chemistry and physics are expensive to teach. When consulted about an increase in student:staff ratios, Alison Rodger noted that the students were not suffering but academic staff were all working much harder to ensure this.

For the full article see: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/11/uk-chemistry-departments-spending-finances-deficit

An Angew. Chem. VIP from Lewandowski group investigates the influence of different intermolecular interactions on protein dynamics. The paper presents first ever extensive site-specific relaxation measurements on a large non-crystalline protein-antibody complex in a few nanomole quantities. The study paves the way for direct characterization of dynamics in biologically important but sensitivity-limited samples of proteins within large complexes.

Warwick Chemistry, Life Science and Medical School team up to make a new generation of readily self-assembled metallohelices kill cancer cells at very low concentration (40 nM) but have low toxicty to microbes, insects and healthy human cells.

Senior Teaching Fellow, Dr Paolo Coppo, has just been awarded the HEA Fellow status, which is the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education.

The Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have awarded an Early Career Research Fellowship to Ross Hatton to develop electrodes for the emerging generation of photovoltaics (PVs)

Dr. Luke Rochford and Dr. Alex Ramadan from Prof Tim Jones' group, in collaboration with Dr. Sandrine Heutz (Imperial college london) and Prof. Phil Woodruff (Warwick Physics), publish a study of the formation of ordered heteroepitaxial organic films in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

Ordered growth of vanadyl phthalocyanine (VOPc) on an iron phthalocyanine (FePc) monolayer

Congratulations to Dan Warr (Costantini group), winner of our annual Art and Photography Competition, with his entry "Molecular triangles".

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

Ross Jaggers, a second year PhD student in the research group of prof.dr.ir. Stefan Bon (BonLab) in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, has been invited to attend the Stonewall Young Leaders Programme in London this coming September. The programme, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, explores how sexual orientation and gender identity relates to the workplace and career aspirations, as well as inspiring participants to think about their impact on others as young LGBT leaders and role models.

For more information on Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBT rights charity, visitwww.stonewall.org.uk.