Nanostructured Polymeric Materials for Healthcare

人类在21世纪头几十年面临的主要科学/技术挑战包括与改善医疗保健相关的挑战。全球预期寿命的提高带来了全球性的挑战，这导致迫切需要新的生物医学材料来促进再生医学。这包括使用生物衍生或生物启发的材料来再生组织，甚至最终再生器官。特别是，我们的研究涉及创造用于角膜和皮肤组织工程的新材料，基于功能化的多肽/聚合物水基凝胶。我们正在开发可以修复胶原蛋白或刺激其产生的材料，这将导致治疗眼睛和皮肤创伤的新方法。我们还将扩大和发展我们正在进行的关于阿尔茨海默病等神经退行性疾病的研究计划，这种疾病影响着世界各地数百万人。我们正在开发基于防止蛋白质聚集的新的诊断和潜在的治疗系统，蛋白质聚集被认为是导致这种疾病和相关疾病(如CJD和II型糖尿病)的原因。全球人口增长和经济发展导致对清洁饮用水的需求迅速增加，甚至可能在受限于共享水资源的国家之间爆发“水战争”。在这里，膜科学是迎接挑战的关键，我们自己的工作重点是开发利用低压纳滤和超滤技术回收饮用水的膜。聚合物材料的性能特性往往在很大程度上取决于它们在纳米尺度上的详细结构。我们研究的一个基本目的是通过聚合物链的自组装来实现特定的聚合物纳米结构，组装过程本身由所涉及的聚合物的链序列控制。在平台资助的新研究中，将开发对单体序列提供前所未有的控制的合成方法。这种设计方法以高水平的理论研究和最先进的结构分析为基础，将在我们几乎所有的工作中得到遵循-从膜离聚体和淀粉样共聚物的研究，到自修复聚合物和作为潜在响应性和生物相容性表面的聚合物刷子的新的探索性工作。雷丁聚合物集团(I.W.Hamley，H.M.Colquhoun，C.J.Connon，W.Hayes和Z.Wang)参与了许多国际合作。该集团在聚合物设计和合成(Colquhoun、Hayes和Hamley)、表征(Hamley)、生物材料开发(Connon和Hamley)和建模(Wang)方面的专业领域具有很强的互补性。该集团的资金来源广泛，目前拥有总额达800万GB的赠款和外部学生资助，其中包括约400万GB的RCUK资金(主要是EPSRC和BBSRC)。

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).