Nanotechnology - It’s going to be huge!

Current treatment protocols for cancer involve chemotherapy agents that are highly toxic and designed to kill all rapidly dividing cells in the body, including normal healthy cells. As a result, patients can experience severe side effects, and for survivors, lifelong health issues. Nanomedicine is a new approach that involves designing biodegradable polymers, tiny molecules composed of repeating structural units, that can package and deliver therapeutic drugs specifically to tumour cells while avoiding normal healthy cells.

Ever considered how making something so tiny on a ton scale could be possible? Ed, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Technical Director of Promethean Particles and professional tinker-er of coffee machines is here to tell you how it’s done. He’ll explain how using highly pressurised water to make commercially useful nanoparticles is an environmentally friendly and simple methodology. So simple, in fact, that he made his very own nanoparticle reactor from an espresso machine.

Our research focuses on sustainable chemistry and in particular on finding clean ways to make new polymers (plastics). The world is reliant upon plastics and we will show how we are creating new ways to provide unique properties on the Nano-scale. Of course, there are also problems with plastics. Our research is also focussed on developing new materials that might come from Nature, or could easily degrade and to try to avoid the build-up of plastic waste. Steve is also the singer in a rock band (@ramshackle_men) and plays football in the East Midlands Veteran League (Beeston Old Boys FC).