Chemical Science journal features Medway School of Pharmacy research
June 2011
Research from Medway School of Pharmacy lecturer Dr Alison Edwards on creating new gels using water – or hydrogels - has made the front cover of Chemical Science journal.
Dr Edwards’ paper, produced in collaboration with the research group of Prof. Rein Ulijn at the University of Strathclyde, is on developing a new class of hydrogel with applications including wound healing and cell culture and is featured in the current edition of the Journal – which also devotes its front cover to an image representing the research.
Dr Edwards explains: “Hydrogels are commonly made using polymers and the gel is thus made from huge molecules (but cannot revert afterwards to liquid form) whereas they can also be made from small molecules which interact together to act like a huge molecule and this can be reverted back to a solution from the gel (and back again if so desired). This can be highly advantageous when a gel needs to be formed or removed e.g. from a biological environment.
Carbohydrates have distinctive reactivity in both a chemical and biological context which means they are ideal building blocks for small molecule hydrogels. A new class of hydrogel with two different building blocks, one of which can be glucosamine or galactosamine, has been shown to form successful hydrogels using an interaction between the carbohydrate building block (CH) and aromatic building block (π). This is the first report of a hydrogel where the building blocks are held together in this way.
The approach to make these molecules focuses on using readily accessible carbohydrates and to exploit the preferential reactivity of the carbohydrate to achieve cheap hydrogels which will be of commercial interest for biological application. Given the rich structural diversity of carbohydrates, we still have a vast range of avenues to explore to optimise hydrogel materials for specific biological applications.”
