Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

Cooking upnew materialsfor biomedicalapplicationsEnzyme-responsive materials (ERMs) are what Chris Duxbury’sEnzymat project is all about – materials into which enzymes aremixed to trigger a specifi c reaction. For instance, ERMs can swellor collapse or turn from a solution into a gel. One advantageof enzymes as catalysts is that they are very specifi c: they fi tthe reaction they were designed for like a key fi ts into a lock.Moreover, they are environmentally friendly and can replacepotentially toxic catalysts based on heavy metals.Smart and even smarter plasticDr Duxbury’s research resulted in a plastic with different degreesof hardness: ‘The material that I made softens when you heatit,’ the Englishman explains. ‘You can change the temperatureit softens at depending on the initial programming you put inthe material.’Basically, the ‘programming’ determines how far the reactionproceeds: ‘The degree of the response produced by the materialwas encoded into the material during its synthesis, in a similarway to the binary code used throughout information technology,’Dr Duxbury explains. ‘You can programme it so that a lot ofthe reaction occurs and then you get a material that softensat a low temperature. If the reaction only proceeds to a smallextent, then you get a material at the end that softens at ahigher temperature.’ And how will it be used? It is all still rathertheoretical, he admits, but it opens up exciting possibilities forbiomedical applications.The shape of things to comeAnd the theory itself is already causing quite a stir. ‘Theresults of this research have led to several patent applications,book chapters, journal articles, presentations at internationalconferences and further grant applications,’ Dr Duxbury129