Research

Biopolymer nanoparticles for single dose delivery of vaccines 

Research in this project is targeted at developing a single dose vaccine delivery system based on biopolymer nanoparticles for use in animal health applications.

Preparation of single dose vaccines is challenging because of the requirement to have both an initial pulse release of vaccine at injection and the need for a further delayed pulsed release one or more months later. Despite many attempts to develop a suitable delivery system for this application, there is no commercial product that meets this need.

Functional polymer-based microenvironments for controlling cell function in biomanufacturing 

This project is developing synthetic microenvironments to control cell function for use in biomanufacturing, including the production of protein or peptide-based pharmaceuticals and cell therapies.

Cells exist in a microenvironmental niche of biological information in the form of spatially arranged extra cellular matrix components and ligands (peptides, carbohydrates, etc) which bind to specific cell surface receptors and determine cell function (protein production, propagation or differentiation). Cell response is greatly attenuated in environments typically used in contemporary biomanufacturing (e.g. in suspensions or on surfaces) where any biological information present is not ordered. Synthetic functional polymer-based microenvironments (smart contoured surfaces), containing the required minimum level of biological information and spatial arrangement tailored for a given function, could be used to substantially enhance the efficiency of many industrial biomanufacturing processes. In bioprocessing, these could be applied to cell production of recombinant products such as peptide- or protein-based pharmaceuticals. In bioreactors, these could be used to direct cell propagation and cell differentiation to produce uniform therapeutic populations of cells for transplantation. One application on which the project is focusing is the use of smart polymer surfaces in bioreactors for the production of transfusible blood, and blood products.