Collaborative work with Ron Unger/Christian Freese at Uni. Mainz (Germany) and Harm-Anton Klok (EPFL, Switzerland) has been accepted for publication in the ACS journal Biomacromolecules. This paper builds on our previous work on designing effecient methods to synthesise libraries of polymer-coated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). These particles are ideal for studying cellular uptake, as the gold provides a unique 'handle' to allow imaging/detection by TEM or ICP-AES. Here we studied the interactions of the AuNPs with primary human endothelial cells - these are some of the first cells that a drug-delivery system comes into contact with, but there interactions have not been studied in detail. In this work we show the influence of particle size and coating on cytoxicity, biomarker expression and cellular uptake.

Our manuscript describing the use of quartz crystal microbalance combined with inhibitory assays to probe the cluster-glycoside effect between synthetic poly(mannopyranosides) and ConA has been accepted for publication in the RSC journal Polymer Chemistry. This work is a collaboration with Dave Haddleton's group and represents another step forward in our efforts to develop potent inhibitors of lectin adhesion. In this work we show that measuring polyemr-lectin affinity using surface methods can lead to confusing interpreptations of 'what is the most active binder'. We also show that the association constant of polymers in this method do not correlate directly with inhibitory assays (more representative of a 'real' situation).

MIG will joing the committee to represent materials/polymer science and glycan recognition interests.

Link to Carbohydrate group here

Paper showing how thermo-responsive polymers can be used to modulate lipophilicity is now online here. This work (with Alison Rodger, Warwick) may provide understanding into how polymer conjugates can be used to gain entry into cells, without the need for receptor-mediated uptake mechanisms

This a a follow up paper to a recent JACS article desribing how maleimido-terminated polymers can be used for bioconjugation into native disulfide bonds in proteins. This paper introduces dithiomaleimides which are tolerant to controlled radical polymerization, removing the need for protecting group strategies. Read the paper here!

Charline Willmet from the University of Louvain, Belgium, is joining us as part of the Erasmus scheme for the next 4 months. She will be working on the design of smart polysaccharide-inspired biomaterials.

Work has been accepted into Macro. Rap. Commun., on the interactions of stimuli responsive polymers with model membranes. Most previous studies on stimuli responsive polymers has focussed simply on those with LCSTS (lower critical solution temperatures) and demonstrating that they can be used for reversible precipitation. In this work, we show that LCST-displaying polymers can be used to tune lipophiliicty, which is a key feature in pharmacy to determine the biodistribution and bio-availability of drug molecules. We demonstrate that the polymers can be triggered to interact with phospholipid vesicles, using a wide range of biophysical techniques. We hope this insight will help us to develop 'smarter' drug delivery, or bioengineering, materials.

Collaborative work with the O'Reilly group has been published online. This is part of our ongoing work to develop 'smart' materials which have triggerable interactions with biological systems. Read the paper here.