Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Imagine a scenario where one morning, a close friend of yours calls you and painfully conveys the news of him being diagnosed with cancer and you, instead of sitting horrified and helpless, casually say “Hey don’t worry man, we have PDT!” That sounds fascinating right?! Yes, Photodynamic therapy has shown potential to do that. With the same fascination towards the idea of photodynamic therapy, inventors of PDT pursued research on this therapy and shaped an unconventional out of box method of treating cancer.  The simple mechanism of working of this technique is widely known. Drugs used in this technique are light sensitive. In response to specific light irradiated on the drug molecule, it converts surrounding molecular oxygen into form of oxygen which kills nearby cancer cells. The reasons this therapy called as out of box here are multifold. First, there are many photosensitizers easily available approved by FDA which can easily respond to specific light and produced the effect explained above. Second it makes use of naturally available oxygen molecules surrounding cancer cells. Last and importantly all the conventional drugs/ therapies for the cancer are immunosuppressive meaning they suppress our immune system after treatment unlike PDT, which is immunostimulative which stimulates immune system of the patient after treatment.

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“Wonder material” they called it when it was discovered last decade and it started to be center of attention from 2010. To understand the reasoning behind calling graphene a wonder material, one need not be a rocket scientist. The beauty of this material is so conspicuous that it can fascinate anybody on the globe. Graphene is one the few materials in existence which is very thin, conductive, transparent and flexible at the same time. The wonder of this material’s thinness is so intriguing, that according to scientists, just ounce of graphene could cover 28 football fields. Only a single atom thick, Graphene could take electronics to the next level with much thinner, faster and cheaper components compared to the current silicon based electronics.

We all know the saying nothing is perfect, however researchers all over the globe are claiming that Graphene may not be perfect but it is close to perfect. The major challenges for making Graphene a game changer in electronics are control over chemical and physical properties by chemical functionalization and processing them upon up-scalable approaches.

One of the most promising areas of materials chemistry research is the creation of synthetic analogues of biological tissue. The development of such materials would reduce the need for transplants and their associated problems. For example, polymer-based, artificial vascular grafts are a promising candidate for use in bypass operations. Unfortunately, they increase the risk of increasing thrombus (blood clot) formation. This in turn can lead to risk of serious medical problems such as stroke, heart attack and pulmonary embolism.

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have found that using functionalised polycaprolactone (PCL) can lead to reduced thrombogenicity. PCL itself is already widely used for in vivo applications although its hydrophobicity reduces its usefulness as an artificial blood vessel. Hydrophobic materials are also thought to be unsuitable because of their weak interactions with endothelial cells (ECs) – something commonly implicated in thrombus formation. To overcome these limitations, poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) was grown from PCL surfaces via a graft-from living polymerisation. The side chains of the PGMA were then used to attach gelatine molecules. It was found that the gelatin coat decreased the hydrophobicity of the surface leading to improved EC adhesion and a corresponding reduction in thrombogenicity.

Endothelial cell thrombogenicity is reduced by ATRP-mediated grafting of gelatin onto PCL surfaces
Gordon Minru Xiong, Shaojun Yuan, Chek Kun Tan, Jun Kit Wang, Yang Liu, Timothy Thatt Yang Tan, Nguan Soon Tan and Cleo Choong
J. Mater. Chem. B, 2014, 2, 485-493.  DOI:10.1039/C3TB20760a

James Serginson is a guest web writer for the Journal of Materials Chemistry blog. He currently works at Imperial College London carrying out research into nanocomposites.

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