Warwick Polymer Group » News (tag [spotlight1])

Warwick drives green growth with £13.6M EPSRC hub in plastics

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 13:05:57 GMT

From developing greener materials and processes to growing more sustainable supply chains, a new £13.6 million research hub, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), will help researchers at the University of Warwick tackle some of the UK’s biggest manufacturing challenges.

Dr Hannes Houck wins €1.5 million EU funding for innovative DeCoDER project

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:54:10 GMT

Dr Hannes Houck (Chemistry) has been awarded €1.5 million starting grants by the European Research Council (ERC). This funding, part of a €761 million initiative, empowers visionary talents to establish independent teams and pursue groundbreaking research across Europe.

As part of the drive toward sustainable manufacturing, Dr. Houck has proposed a concept to transform 3D photo-printed wasted into a reusable ink for re-printing. The project, titled "DeCoDER: Decoupled Covalent Dynamic Exchange Reactions for Closed-Loop Photo-3D-printing", introduces a novel chemical framework designed to enable full recyclability of 3D printed materials—without the need for additional chemical processes.

Dr Hannes Houck explains,

"Light-based 3D printing is rapidly transforming from niche applications to more industrially relevant manufacturing of the next-generation of synthetic materials, including dental retainers, footwear and 3D printed car parts. But with this fast-growing production also comes severe concerns and environmental challenges about the large amounts of non-recyclable waste that is generated from 3D photo-printing. The current working principle of light-based 3D printing inks is based on photochemical processes that permanently harden a liquid into a solid - so-called covalently crosslinked - 3D object. This makes the ink single-use and the resulting printed materials unrecyclable. This project has the ambition to address this issue by re-designing the chemistry so that one and the same ink can be re-used for multiple re-prints, making it a closed-loop process."

Dr Hannes Houck said,

“It is a great honour to receive this prestigious ERC grant and I am very much looking forward to the enormous boost that this gives to our Photochemistry for Materials research team. With the DeCoDER project, we want to make impactful contributions and overcome fundamental challenges to the chemistry that drives light-based additive manufacturing."

Dr Alex Baker wins RSC Education Prize

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:43:00 GMT

Dr Alex Baker, Warwick Polymer Group, has been named winner of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Early Career Prize for Excellence in Higher Education in recognition of brilliance in chemistry education.

Templating Calcium Phosphate onto Graphene Oxide Sheets

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 18:39:46 GMT

BonLab designs a stick-on-demand adhesive for linerless labels

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:03:00 GMT

University of Warwick spin out company to develop world’s only testosterone patch for menopause

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 11:22:00 GMT

A company born out of ground-breaking research at The University of Warwick has raised almost £3 million of to develop a testosterone patch for people suffering from low libido and reduced zest for life due to the menopause.

Medherant, founded by University of Warwick’s, Professor David Haddleton, is aiming to begin clinical trials of this pioneering treatment in Autumn 2023. Medherant is ultimately aiming to get approval for clinical use, subject to a successful trial.

Assuming trials go well, this would be the only testosterone replacement patch available globally and introduced first in the UK.

Whilst oestrogen and progesterone HRT patches are available, there is currently no transdermal delivery patch available for testosterone delivery for women suffering from adverse symptoms from the menopause. Testosterone is an essential hormone for women and its production declines in post-menopausal people.

David Haddleton, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Warwick and Medherant’s founder said: “This is a very exciting development for us – the potential of this technology to improve women’s lives is huge. The work we’re doing at Medherant and at Warwick isn’t just theoretical, but instead aimed at a problem women are facing which can drastically affect their everyday lives and jobs.”

“This could deliver a product that is much needed and is just not available. With the technology already proven to work we can use our new patch to remove needless misery from women’s daily lives. We hope this will transform life for those suffering from post-menopause issues nationally, and indeed globally”.

Since 2015, Menopause Guidelines issued by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommend that testosterone supplementation be considered for menopausal people with low sexual desire if hormone replacement therapy alone is not effective.

However, there are no currently approved testosterone products specifically for women. Currently, women seeking treatment for the effects of menopause on libido cannot be prescribed testosterone on the NHS, with many having to use irregular doses of gel only approved for use on men.

This new patch is intended to address this gap in menopause products, providing specific treatment that can be made widely available.

John Burt, CEO of Medherant, said: “Having the funding in place for the first clinical trial of our testosterone patch for post-menopausal people will enable Medherant to take a major step towards registration of the product and being able to address this significant gap in the options available for those in this very important stage of their lives.”

The funding round was led by Mercia Asset Management who focus on businesses in the West Midlands who are looking to expand.

To find out more about the pioneering work of Warwick spin out company Medherant please see here.

To find out more about Professor Haddleton and his work at Warwick please click here and the impact our work is having here.

ENDS

University of Warwick press office contact:

Annie Slinn

Communications Officer | Press & Media Relations | University of WarwickLink opens in a new window
Email: annie.slinn@warwick.ac.uk