Departmental news

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Warwick have secured £2.3M in UKRI funding to create materials with radically new optical and mechanical properties, that can be produced at scale and low cost.

The Government has announced plans to reform weddings law in England and Wales in a move set to completely overhaul how and where couples can marry. This is the biggest change to weddings law in over two hundred years.

Leaders from academia, industry, and government gather to spotlight next-generation power electronics driving the UK’s net zero transition.

Prof Chris Corre, Prof Greg Challis and Dr. Lona Alkhalaf from the University of Warwick and Professor David Lupton rfrom Monash University have discovered a promising new antibiotic that shows activity against drug-resistant bacterial pathogens, including MRSA and VRE.

In a new study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), researchers from the Monash Warwick Alliance Combatting Emerging Superbug Threats Initiative have discovered a promising new antibiotic - pre-methylenomycin C lactone. The new antibiotic was found ‘hiding in plain sight’ as an intermediate chemical in the natural process that produces the well-known antibiotic methylenomycin A. When tested for antimicrobial activity, one of the intermediates, pre-methylenomycin C lactone, was shown to be over 100 times more active against diverse Gram-positive bacteria than the original antibiotic methylenomycin A. Specifically, it was shown to be effective against S. aureus and E. faecium, the bacterial species behind Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) respectively.

Importantly, the researchers could not detect any emergence of resistance to pre-methylenomycin C lactone in Enterococcus bacteria under conditions where vancomycin resistance is observed. Vancomycin is a “last line” treatment for Enterococcus infection, so this finding is especially promising for VRE, a WHO High Priority Pathogen.

With its simple structure, potent activity, difficult to resist profile, and scalable synthesis, pre-methylenomycin C lactone represents a promising new candidate that could potentially help to save some of the 1.1 million people who are the victims of AMR every year.

StayRose: a photostable StayGold derivative red-shifted by genetic code expansion was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry last week by a team of scientists from the groups of Mohan Balasubramanian (WMS), Masanori Mishima (WMS), Allister Crow (SLS), Falk Schneider (WMS), Abhishek Kumar (Marine Biological Laboratory) and Lijiang Song (Warwick Chemistry), funded by a collaborative Wellcome Trust bioimaging grant.

This work was led by first author Dr Will Smith, who completed his PhD as part of the MRC DTP.

The work presents a new fluorescent protein named StayRose, which is the first red version of the photobleaching-resistant green protein StayGold. These photostable proteins can be tagged to proteins of interest for microscopy and overcome the previous issue of fluorescence loss during prolonged imaging. StayRose contains an unnatural amino acid, 3-aminotyrosine, which underpins its red colour. Tests showed that StayRose maintains the extreme photostability of StayGold. The work presents a StayRose crystal structure, the first of a 3-aminotyrosine-incorporating fluorescent protein, and demonstrates use of StayRose in bacteria and zebrafish embryos.

Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window

A recent publication in Advanced Healthcare Materials led by PhD student Sophie Hill is the result of a collaboration between Sébastien Perrier and Robert Dallmann. Together they show the potential of cyclic peptide-polymer conjugate nanotubes as powerful drug delivery vectors in a mammalian model of human disease.

The Perrier lab has already shown that these nanotubes are great drug delivery tools due to their propensity for dynamic self-assembly, high aspect ratio morphology and structural interchangeability, and demonstrated the shielding abilities of the polymeric corona of nanotubes to enhance pro-drug bond stabilities and modulate hydrolysis.

Here, they have used a hydrophobic core with multiple drug units attached to improve drug loading capacity and overall efficiency of the nanotube carriers. They show in vitro efficacy and in vivo pharmacokinetic and anti-tumour pharmacodynamics of these nanotubes in colorectal cancer models, comparing the potent topoisomerase inhibitor SN-38 with its clinically-used parent pro-drug irinotecan.

This work highlights the potential of SN-38 nanotubes as well-tolerated therapeutic option for colorectal cancer, with implications for future clinical translation and improved patient outcomes.

Read the paper here.Link opens in a new window

This week we are delighted to interview Reader in Law and Director of Postgraduate Research, Dr Daniel Matthews, for our Warwick Law School Staff Spotlight series.

WMG has launched a new undergraduate programme, BEng Robotics Engineering with Artificial Intelligence (AI), expanding its undergraduate education portfolio. The course has been developed in response to significant technological transformations across industry, driven by the increasing use of robotics and AI.