Nanostructured Polymeric Materials for Healthcare

Key scientific/technological challenges facing mankind in the opening decades of the 21st Century include those associated with improved healthcare. A global challenge results from the worldwide improvement in life expectancy, which is leading to an urgent need for new biomedical materials, to facilitate regenerative medicine. This involves using bio-derived or biologically inspired materials to regenerate tissue or even ultimately organs. In particular, our research involves the creation of new materials for tissue engineering of the cornea and skin, based around functionalized peptide/polymer water-based gels. We are developing materials that can repair collagen or stimulate its production, leading to new ways to treat eye and flesh wounds. We will also extend and develop our ongoing research programme on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, which affects millions of people around the world. We are developing novel diagnostic and potentially therapeutic systems based on preventing the aggregation of proteins that is believed to be the cause of this and related diseases such as CJD and type II diabetes.

Population growth and economic development across the planet is leading to rapidly increasing demands for clean drinking water, with even the prospect of "water wars" between nations which are constrained to share water resources. Here, membrane science is key to meeting the challenge, with our own work focusing on the the development of membranes for the recycling of drinking water by low-pressure nanofiltration and ultrafiltration techniques.

The performance characteristics of polymeric materials are often crucially dependent on their detailed structure at the nanoscale. A fundamental aim of our research is to achieve specified polymer nanostructures through the self-assembly of polymer chains, with the assembly process itself being governed by the chain-sequences of the polymers involved. Synthetic methods providing unprecedented control over monomer sequences will be developed in the new research made possible by the Platform grant. This design-approach, underpinned by insights resulting from high-level theoretical studies and state-of-the-art structural analyses, will be followed in nearly all our work - from the study of membrane ionomers and amyloid-forming copolymers to new, exploratory work on self-repairing polymers and on polymer brushes as potentially responsive and biocompatible surfaces.

The Reading Polymer Group (I.W. Hamley, H.M. Colquhoun, C.J. Connon, W. Hayes and Z. Wang) is involved in numerous international collaborations. The Group's areas of expertise, in polymer design and synthesis (Colquhoun, Hayes and Hamley), characterisation (Hamley), biomaterials development (Connon and Hamley) and modelling (Wang) are highly complementary. The Group is funded from a wide range of sources and currently holds grants and external studentship-funding to a total value of £8M, including ca. £4M of RCUK funding (primarily EPSRC and BBSRC).

This proposal is in a strategically important research area with considerable commercial and academic interest both nationally and internationally. For example the development of novel hydrogels for regenerative medicine, using stem cell technology, is relevant to the RCUK priority theme of Lifelong Health and Wellbeing. Similarly, novel drug delivery technologies are important for the strong UK biomedical and pharma sectors. Purification of drinking water by membrane filtration is an increasingly vital technology, especially in the context of removing trace levels of endocrine disruptors (e.g. hormones and pesticide residues). Such technologies have considerable potential for economic and societal impact, directly benefiting both the UK populations and that of the rest of the world.

The beneficiaries include Pharmaceutical/ Biotech companies (such as Biocompatibles, with whom we are working on biocompatible membranes) and companies involved with skincare - both cosmetics (e.g. Proctor and Gamble and Forme Laboratories) but also those involved in wound healing (such as Smith and Nephew). These companies will benefit from the new approaches we are developing for wound healing, drug delivery, regenerative medicine for eye diseases etc. Our project on water filtration membranes is relevant to water companies, and also NGOs in third world countries where clean water is in short supply and therefore water filtration is critical. Our work is expected to lead to impacts in terms of new technologies of industrial relevance and/or IP generation over a 3-8 year timescale.

The general public will benefit from our research relevant to Alzheimers, eye diseases and wound healing as often these currently do not have effective treatments, therefore these new approaches may lead to dramatical improvements in the quality of life of those with these diseases as well as their carers and families. Our work is also relevant to conflict medicine, wound healing in war zones, with benefits to the armed forces (as indicated by DSTL support of ongoing related research by two of the applicants). There are currently major problems of increasing population leading to insufficient clean water, and new water filtration technologies, such as those we are developing, may help address future problems of supply. The mathematical modelling approaches covering multiple length- and time-scales are expected to have broad impact in the modelling of other soft materials and polymeric systems. Impact here is expected on a 15-20 year timescale.