IFB

CBE's work in Interfacial Bioengineering focuses on questions that concern the design and self-assembly of peptide nanostructures, and how assembly is affected by local physico-chemical factors such as pH and shear stress.

This interest has led us to new technology that can potentially revolutionise the way we view and process emulsions. For example, Dr Dexter and Professor Middelberg have designed and patented technology that can be used to rapidly coalesce emulsions by the simple addition of small molecule effectors or by changes in pH.

Our work also seeks to establish analytical methods to help us understand biomolecular structure and behaviour at liquid-liquid and solid-liquid interfaces and to exploit this knowledge in a diverse set of applications including surface-based protein refolding and enzyme catalysis. These reaction engineering problems underpin both biopharmaceutical processing as well as common problems such as enzyme-based cleaning.

The group is also interested in the design of nanostructures at interfaces with a particular focus on exploring how novel emulsion-based products having unique functionality can be designed and processed into products able to deliver therapeutic payloads into cells. Optimisation of this process requires a detailed quantitative understanding of the physical mass-transfer barriers that must be overcome in order to transfer material to a cellular cytoplasm or nucleus. IFB researchers work closely with NPB staff to understand how the physical structures they create interact with complex biological cells.