Project
Silk – ancient material for novel medical applications
Supervisor(s)
Dr Philipp Seib, Dr Iain Oswald
Area
Better medicine, Biomaterials, Silk, Drug delivery, Cell delivery, Cell biology
Description
Silk is a sustainable and ecologically friendly biopolymer with a robust clinical track record in humans for load bearing applications, in part due to its excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility. Our ability to take bottom-up and top-down approaches for the generation of silk (inspired) biopolymers has been critical in supporting the evolution of silk materials and formats, including silk nanoparticles and hydrogels for drug and cell delivery, respectively. This ambitious and interdisciplinary PhD project will engineer novel silks for cell and drug delivery.
Techniques
- Reverse engineering of silk
- Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy
- RAMAN spectroscopy
- Rheology
- In vitro cell culture of primary and immortalised cells
- Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
- Biochemical assays (various)
References
Seib FP (2017) Silk nanoparticles-an emerging anticancer nanomedicine. AIMS Bioengineering 4, 239-258
Seib FP Kaplan DL (2013) Silk for drug delivery applications: opportunities and challenges. Israel Journal of Chemistry 53, 756-766