Polymer Chemistry Blog

Cameron Alexander received degrees (BSc and PhD) in Chemistry from the University of Durham, UK, and carried out post-doctoral research at the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, University of Cambridge. He took up an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship before moving to the School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham in June 2005. Professor Alexander was promoted to a personal Chair in Polymer Therapeutics at Nottingham in 2009, where he is also Head of the Division of Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering, and Operations Director of the EPSRC/AstraZeneca/University of Nottingham Doctoral Training Centre in Targeted Therapeutics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Materials Chemistry, and has published more than 100 refereed articles. Research in his group centres on the synthesis of responsive/‘smart’ materials for biomedical applications. Professor Alexander is currently an EPSRC Leadership Fellow (2009-2014) in the area of personalised medicines.

Please follow the link for further information on Cameron’s research group and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

I have always been fascinated by science, but have also always felt that practical value and application are important, hence the study of chemistry and my subsequent move into polymers and pharmaceutical materials. As is no doubt the case with many career scientists I was lucky to have great chemistry teachers and mentors throughout my career, from school, through an industry gap year with Ciba-Geigy, then at university in Durham and on to my current position at Nottingham. In chemistry and related disciplines, you have a chance to be creative, work with a whole range of amazing people and ideally, do something that is of value to others. We try to inspire in turn, and again I have been lucky to be part of Brady Haran’s fantastic Test-Tube project at Nottingham (see http://www.test-tube.org.uk/). The Periodic Table videos he has done with Martyn Poliakoff, Pete Licence and others are an inspiration in themselves.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00128K)

In a School of Pharmacy we combine fundamental and applied science interests, and modifying the properties of natural materials with polymers fits into both categories. In addition to their intended roles in biology, many biopolymers, and especially proteins, might act as powerful drugs but they are often too easily degraded to be used in a standard injectable formulation. Decorating proteins with polymers can enhance their stability as well as increase their circulation time in the body, but also can reduce their intended activity too. By attaching polymers that can collapse or expand dependent on a stimulus, we intend to keep the enhanced stability of the polymer-protein conjugate, but switch the enzyme back to a highly active state when needed by collapsing the attached polymer. Here we developed methods to modify trypsin, a well-known protease, but in ways that allowed the chemistries to be done entirely in aqueous media, and with polymer architectures that allowed us to play with the way the polymer-trypsin conjugate assembled in solution. In turn, this allowed us to direct the activity of the enzyme – though of course not to the extent that we intended!

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

In part it was because it was a Themed Issue but also because the journal is becoming the go-to site for the polymer science that most overlaps with what we are doing. The Editorial Board are all strongly involved in the more multidisciplinary aspects of polymer science, so it makes sense for us to send our papers to Polym. Chem. as, if we get past the reviewers, the science will be very visible.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

I will be at the Materials Chemistry 10 Conference (Manchester, July 2010), the UK PharmSci meeting (Nottingham, September 2011) and the International Symposium on Stimuli-Responsive Materials (Hattiesburg, Mississippi) in October 2011 talking about responsive polymers.

How do you spend your spare time?

Pre-children days my spare time involved mountain walks, trying to play drums and a bit of volunteering for Amnesty International but now the realities of combining science with young(ish) children means the concept of spare time is pretty nebulous. However, I do manage the occasional attempt at playing squash and plan to hit a drum kit badly for the amusement or otherwise of delegates at next year’s Warwick Polymer meeting.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

Mountain guide in Scotland – no contest.

Patrick Theato studied chemistry at the University of Mainz (Germany) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA), and obtained his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. R. Zentel at the University of Mainz in 2001. In 2002, he was awarded a Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation and joined the group of Prof. D.Y. Yoon at Seoul National University (Korea), where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow, followed by a short research stay at Stanford University (USA) with Prof C.W. Frank. In 2003, he joined the University of Mainz as a young faculty member and completed his Habilitation in 2007. Since 2009 he holds a joint appointment with the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University within the World Class University (WCU) program. In 2011 he accepted a prize senior lectureship at the University of Sheffield (UK). Shortly after he moved to University of Hamburg (Germany), accepting a tenured associate professorship for polymer chemistry. His current research interests include the defined synthesis of reactive polymers, block copolymers, design of multi stimuli-responsive polymers, versatile functionalization of interfaces, hybrid polymers, polymers for electronics and templating of polymers.

Please follow the link to get more information about Patrick’s research group and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

Chemistry was my first love. Probably as every student, I was captivated by the fact that chemistry comes with a big bang and a lot of smoke. Who doesn’t remember his first explosion (those planned and those that happened surprisingly)? Seriously, from the first day on in middle school, I was fascinated by the art of creating something on a molecular level. Even though the concept of “molecular level” did not reveal itself to me during those early days. Besides, I was fond of the logic behind this art. The happy marriage of art and crafts-work is what I call chemistry and this motivates me even today.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C0PY00314J)

Oh, I like this paper very much! It represents our very first approach of taking our expertise in post-polymerization modification chemistry, which we have mastered previously on the molecular level, to construct nanometer-sized objects. When it comes to nanoobjects, most approaches presented in the literature focus on the chemistry first and then utilize “self-assembly” of the building blocks into the desired nanoobject. We took the other way around. We first focused on the creation of the nanoobject (in the present case utilizing a templating approach) and then applied our post-polymerization modification strategies to dial-in the desired chemistry of the nanoobject. As we can control the dimensions and the chemical functionality of the nanoobject independently, it allows us to take the concepts from the synthesis of single polymer chains to the level of nanoobjects.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

Polymer Chemistry was launched very recently, and I have to admit that I was rather skeptical at first about yet another journal. But once you look at the contents of the journal in more detail, you will realize that the journal indeed fills a gap that existed for a long time. The chance to concentrate on pure synthetic polymer chemistry is thrilling and an aspect that hardly any other high impact journal offers. I am convinced that it will be one of the top journals when it comes to polymer synthesis. Therefore it was a logical choice for our synthetic paper.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

There are plenty of chances to meet me. Probably too many! [“laughs”]

The next conferences are Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition in Montreal, Canada, the Gordon Research Conference for Polymers in South Hadley, USA, the ACS Fall meeting in Denver, USA, the 12^th Pacific Polymer Conference on Jeju, Korea, and a couple of more small meetings. But readers may always feel free to contact me by email.

How do you spend your spare times?

Spare time? What is that? The rare moments of spare time I enjoy being with my family, travelling, cooking (interestingly, most chemists are good cooks) or fidgeting something on my computer.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

Either being a comedian, a computer scientist or in any other way being a happy person.

Steve Howdle is currently leading his research group in the School of Chemistry, The University of Nottingham, UK. His main research interests are supercritical fluids, biomaterials, polymer modification, polymer composites, nanocomposites and devices. Steve is the chairman of the Macro Group UK, which is a joint interest group of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Society of Chemical Industry. Steve is also coach of the Toton Tigers Under 10s football squad and holds an official coaching award of the English FA.

Please follow the link to get more information about Steve’s research group and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

Just like many others, I was inspired by some very good chemistry teachers when I was at School – flashes, bangs, flames and smells – all the things that still attract young people to chemistry!

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper?

I’ve been working with supercritical carbon dioxide for most of my career.  The world  has a problem with CO₂ – and a great deal of effort and money is being channelled into collecting and storing it. I think we really ought to be using it!  Some chemists are activating it, some are polymerising it, I think that if just some of that CO₂ could replace other solvents this could have a  large impact which would be very positive for the environment.  But it’s more than that – we have shown that there are many cases where you can carry out a reaction or a process in supercritical CO₂ that you simply cannot achieve in a normal solvent – so there could be very real advantages to using CO₂ – and that has been a major driver for my research recently with applications from polymer and material synthesis through to tissue engineering and drug delivery.

This particular paper is focussed on showing that some new inexpensive  polymers have high solubility in CO₂ and could be used as effective surfactants and stabilisers for CO₂. Up till now, only fluorinated and silicone based materials showed significant solubility, and these can be expensive and are not always environmentally benign. We hope that our paper will show that alternative, cheaper materials could be used, and hence open up more opportunities to exploit supercritical carbon dioxide.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

It’s the first RSC Journal focussed on Polymers, and it really is a natural choice for quite a lot of my research.  This is my first paper in PC – but I’m sure there will be more!

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

The next conference I will be going to is quite unusual – The 6th Scientific and Engineering Conference with International Participation “Supercritical Fluids: Fundamentals, Technologies, Innovations” is being held on the shores of Lake Baikal, Siberia in early July!

How do you spend your spare time?

I have two teenage boys – both competitive swimmers – and I spend a lot of my time ferrying them to training and competitions (I’m writing these answers by the pool!).  I also love football, I still play (for a Veterans’ team) and I also coach kids – I am the manager of the Toton Tigers U13s squad.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
Football player– but I wasn’t good enough!

Heather D. Maynard received a B.S. with Honors in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a M.S. in Materials Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology was awarded in the summer of 2000 for research in the group of Nobel Prize winner Robert Grubbs. She then moved to the laboratory of Jeffrey Hubbell at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), where from 2000-2002 she was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Maynard joined the UCLA faculty as an Assistant Professor in August 2002 as the first Howard Reiss Career Development Chair in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and as a member of the California NanoSystems Institute.  She is now an Associate Professor.  Maynard’s research interests include polymer synthesis, biohybrid materials, surface modification, and nanomedicine.

Please follow the link to get more information about Heather’s group and her recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?
I have always been curious about how things work and like solving puzzles. In junior high I took a science class with a terrific teacher that covered physics, chemistry, and biology.  Although I enjoyed all of them, it was chemistry that really sparked my interest.  Even then the idea that I could come to understand the world around me at a molecular level and could create new materials enthralled me. At the age of twelve I decided to be a chemistry professor.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00034A)
One of my main research interests is the synthesis and application of protein-polymer conjugates.  These conjugates are utilized as therapeutics to treat a range of human diseases, so we considered the synthesis and mode of action of known protein therapeutics.  The paper summarizes all of the FDA approved protein-polymer conjugates.  We teamed up with a medical doctor at UCLA to write this review, which describes the synthesis of these materials, as well as the biological activity, administration, and where possible the half-life information.  Since there are many polymer chemists interested in bioconjugates, we anticipated that a concise review of currently used therapeutics would be useful to the community.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
Polymer Chemistry is an exciting new journal by the RSC, and we were pleased to be invited to take part in a themed issue on Polymer Bioconjugates.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
I will attend the International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies in Singapore in June and the American Chemical Society Fall National Meeting in Denver.

How do you spend your spare time?
I enjoy spending time with my family and also like to mountain bike.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
That is a hard question to answer as it is very difficult to imagine myself not a scientist.  Perhaps I would enjoy being an astronaut.

Bert Klumperman is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Polymer Science in University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Bert is very well known in the Polymer Science field with his studies on understanding the kinetics of radical polymerization reactions. Their research is based on not only mechanistic and kinetic studies but also the synthesis of advanced macromolecular structures for various applications. Please follow the links for further information on Bert’s research group and his current paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?
During secondary school I was very much attracted to science topics (mainly mathematics, biology and chemistry). After initial thoughts on studying biology, I decided to go for chemistry and chemical engineering at Twente University (Netherlands). In my current position in Stellenbosch (South Africa) I get many opportunities to collaborate with scientists in Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pharmacology and the Medical School. I greatly enjoy this direction of my research.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/c1py00069a)
Throughout my career (initial industrial career at DSM Research, later academic career at Eindhoven University of Technology and Stellenbosch University), poly(styrene-co-maleic anhydride) (SMA) has always played a big role. It is almost like a red line through my entire career up to this point. In 2009, my colleague Prof Peter Mallon and I supervised a student who worked for a number of weeks on electrospinning of SMA. She showed that there are very interesting possibilities in terms of post-spinning modification. Among the many experiments she tried to immobilize a protein (lysozyme), which seemed to work. In 2010, we continued this work with an Honours student (William Cloete), who immobilized the enzymes described in the paper. In collaboration with a student from Biochemistry (Craig Adriaanse) from the group of Prof Pieter Swart, he carried out the enzyme immobilization and the characterization in terms of enzyme activity. It turned out that such a facile immobilization technique on a solid, high surface area membrane works very well.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
I already had very positive experience with Polymer Chemistry for the publication of an earlier paper. The layout is done very nicely and, in general, they publish high quality work. It will be very interesting to see what their first Impact Factor (IF) is going to be. I would not be surprised if they manage to compete with the very top journals in the field of Polymer Science in terms of IF. For me at least, Polymer Chemistry will remain a serious candidate for publishing my future work.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
After a conference in Turkey (Antalya, LRP’11) in mid-April, and one in my home town Stellenbosch (UNESCO/IUPAC Conference on Macromolecules and Materials) at the end of April, the next one will again be in South Africa. From 22-26 May, I will be in Pretoria to attend the 11th International Conference on Frontiers of Polymers and Advanced Materials. After that it will be quiet for a while and I will only attend the ACS National Meeting in Denver (28 August – 1 September), where Prof Kris Matyjaszewski will co-organize the 6th edition of an international symposium on Controlled/Living Radical Polymerization.

How do you spend your spare time?
Ever since I was 10 years old, I have actively played musical instruments. Initially I played the clarinet in a wind orchestra and several smaller bands. When I worked full-time in Eindhoven, I played clarinet in one of the top amateur wind orchestras of the Netherlands (“Koninklijke Harmonie Oefening & Uitspanning” from Beek en Donk) with which I participated in the World Music Contest in Kerkrade (Netherlands) in 1997. Just over 10 years ago, I switched to play the oboe. After a few years of practicing, I started to play the 1st oboe in a small symphony orchestra in Wassenaar (Netherlands), which I did for three years. At that time I had taken up my current position at Stellenbosch University (South Africa), which made it impossible to continue. Currently, I am still taking oboe lessons and at this very moment practicing Mozarts Oboe Quartet in F-major, which I hope to play with a violin, viola and cello in the second half of the year at some informal occasion in Stellenbosch.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
This is the most difficult question to answer. The most obvious answer would be a professional musician, which in actual fact I have considered at some point. However, also several professions in the medical world would be serious candidates.

Dr. Cyrille Boyer received his PhD in polymer chemistry in 2005 from the University of Montpellier II.  His PhD was in collaboration with Solvay-Solexis and devoted to the synthesis of new graft copolymers using grafting “onto” under the supervision of Prof. B. Boutevin and Prof. J.J. Robin. In 2005, he undertook an engineer position with Dupont Performance and Elastomers dealing with the synthesis of original fluorinated elastomers using controlled radical polymerization (e.g., iodine transfer polymerization). In October 2006, he joined the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD) as a senior research fellow under the direction of Prof. Tom Davis. In 2009, he got an Australian Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Australian Research Council (ARC). Recently, Dr. Cyrille Boyer has been appointed as a Nanomedicine Lecturer at the University of New South Wales. His research interests mainly cover the preparation of well-defined polymers for drug delivery and imaging applications, protein-polymer conjugates and hybrid organic-inorganic nanoparticles using controlled radical polymerization. He is also working on the preparation of new systems for energy storage using hybrid organic/inorganic nanomaterials. He has co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed research papers, including two book chapters and two international patents.

Please follow the link to get more information about Cyrille’s laboratory and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?
When I was a child, I was very interested in science, in particular chemistry. With chemistry, it is possible to construct/build complex molecules from basic compounds. It is like playing LEGO at the molecular level. I enjoy the bench work and exploring new types of chemistry. My recent Nanomedicine Lectureship position allows me to use my knowledge in polymer sciences to prepare new nanomaterials for applications in nanomedicine. Currently, I am involved in developing new therapies for neuroblastoma and liver diseases in collaboration with Children’s Cancer Institute Australia and Westmead Millennium Institute.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/c1py00102g)
The star polymer structure presents very interesting properties for bio-applications due to their small size as underlined by the great work of Kris Matyjaszewsky (Carnegie Mellon) and Gregg Qiao (University of Melbourne). However, when I started to work on star polymers, I realized it was very difficult to obtain well-defined star polymers with a very high incorporation of arms using the RAFT process and decided to focus my efforts to optimize this process in collaboration with Dave Haddleton, Mike Whittaker and Tom Davis.  Now with this recent success, we are very excited and will continue our work with the plan to exploit these star polymers for drug/gene delivery and for imaging applications.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
I believe this journal has a huge potential and it will become one of the top journals in polymer science. I was immediately impressed with the high quality papers that appeared in the first edition.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
I am going to Frontiers in Polymer Science at the end of May in Lyon (France), American Chemical Society in Denver at the end of August.  At these conferences, I will be presenting the latest outcomes of this on-going research program into RAFT polymer stars. I am also organising a special “Early Career Researcher” symposium as part of the 2^nd International Nanomedicine Conference to be held in Sydney July 2011 (http://oznanomed.org/). It’s 3 days of great science and I welcome everyone to attend.

How do you spend your spare time?
I like to go to the cinema with friends, and practice sport. When I am on my own I always enjoy a good book.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I would love to be a wine maker because I like to drink good wine and my family has some experience in the wine industry. My parents operate a vineyard in the area of Avignon (France); “La Bignande Des Clos”. This is still possible and perhaps something I will consider when I will retire…

Didier Gigmes got his education in chemistry at the University Paul Cezanne (Marseille, France). In 1998, he received his PhD in organic chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Paul Tordo (Marseille, France). He completed a first postdoctoral fellowship at Elf-Atochem, North America in Pennsylvania (USA) under the supervision of Dr. Gary Silverman. Then, he came back to France to work as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Prof. Paul Tordo in Marseille. In 2001 he obtained a position of researcher at CNRS to develop nitroxide-mediated polymerization (NMP). In 2008 he defended his Habilitation at the University of Provence and became a group leader in June 2008. In October 2010, he was appointed Research Director at CNRS. During the past few years he has been working on the development of NMP and particularly the design of a highly efficient SG1-based alkoxyamine. After a significant contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms involved in NMP, one of his main concerns is now to promote NMP in material science for various applications such as biomaterials, environment and energy.

Please follow the link to get more information about Didier’s laboratory and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a scientist?
During my education at the University I met two supervisors who strongly influenced my career choices. I can say that working and discussing with Pr. J.-P. Galy and Pr. P. Tordo made me realize the incredible scope of applications of chemistry and that being a scientist is extremely exciting and not so conventional a job.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00057H)
I was investigating the potential of the radical reactivity of highly labile alkoxyamines. We discovered that by using this kind of compounds, we were able to perform particularly clean 1,2-intermolecular radical addition onto activated olefins. Then, we exploited this reactivity as an efficient, simple and versatile synthetic tool to prepare advanced polymer materials. I like when ideas are simple to set up.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
I was immediately convinced when I heard about the launch of Polymer Chemistry journal. Obviously, the number of papers in science increases year after year, therefore having different high level journals that offer the possibility to publish scientific achievements of the community is mandatory. I really appreciate Polymer Chemistry for the quality of the contributions and also because it is really professional. The review and publication processes are particularly fast and efficient.

At which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
In 2011, I plan to attend the up-coming polymer conference in Granada at European Polymer Congress in July and the ACS Meeting in Denver end August.

How do you spend your spare time?
My spare time is devoted to sport. Playing tennis with my daughters and cycling alone or with friends. It’s good for the shape and also for the mind.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I think I would have wanted to become a physician. This is probably why I’m very interested in research studies dealing with the synthesis and the use of polymer materials designed for biomedical applications.

Krzysztof (Kris) Matyjaszewski received his PhD degree in 1976 at the Polish Academy of Sciences under Prof. S. Penczek.  Since 1985 he has been at Carnegie Mellon University where he is currently J. C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences and director of Center for Macromolecular Engineering. He is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Kris is the editor of Progress in Polymer Science and Central European Journal of Chemistry. His publications have been cited over 42,000 times. His research interests include controlled/living radical polymerization, catalysis, environmental chemistry, and advanced materials for optoelectronic and biomedical applications.

Please follow the link to get more information about Kris’ research group and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?
Chemistry is a central science that bridges efficiently with many other disciplines. Perhaps the most exciting is its molecular aspect  enabling creation of new compounds and new matter.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00050K)
Controlled radical polymerization, including ATRP, allows chemists to link well-defined synthetic polymers with inorganics but also with natural products. Using genetically modified GFP with ATRP initiating sites and entrapping it inside nanogels is a continuation of collaboration with Ryan Mehl’s group and was spearheaded by Saadyah Averick, a talented graduate student.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
We were invited to contribute to a special issue in this new interesting journal.

At which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
European Polymer Federation Meeting in Granada in June 2011.
Together with Brent Sumerlin and Nick Tsarevsky, we are organizing the 6^th Controlled Radical Polymerization in Denver in late August 2011.

How do you spend your spare times?
I wish I will have some spare time…