A manufacturing protocol for the production of biocompatible porous catalysts

Mohammad Alqahtani, researcher of the Multifunctional Materials Lab, is conducting research to develop a new manufacturing method and testing protocol for the fabrication of biocompatible catalyst-carrier for controlled drug delivery. The carrier could be used as a prodrug activation agent when implanted in cancerous tissues in the human body. When orally-ingested drugs are deployed into the area under treatment through the blood stream, the catalyst could activate the prodrugs and these affect the area by releasing anticancer treatment. In this research, a titanium-based carrier was used to manufacture the medical device due to their biocompatibility and non cytotoxicity.

In a feasibility study, the samples were made as porous carriers.  Porous materials have larger surface area than solid materials. Therefore, when the contact area between the drug and the carrier increases this has a potency effect on the effectiveness of the drug.

His work has been presented recently

This work is a continuation of the research work already presented here and published here and here.

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EPSRC CDT in Embedded Intelligence – who we are

Loughborough University hosts the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Embedded Intelligence since April 2013. This centre is training the engineers and scientists of the future in Embedded Intelligence technologies at post-graduate level before they join industry as high calibre employees.

We are proud to count on more than 50 industrial partners to be part of our Centre, co-sponsoring studentships or providing with industrial and research experience to our PhD candidates. Some of them are large companies such as Ford, Renishaw, GE, MOOG, JLR, Rolls-Royce, Taylor Hobson, AVL, Apical (part of ARM), etc. Some others are SMEs who believe that research in this topic can make the difference to their business. To name a few of our collaborators and supporters: FAR UK, Printed Electronics Ltd, Izon Science Ltd, Effect Tech ltd, Motion Robotics ltd, etc. Other organisations that support training and industry impact are also part of the Centre, e.g. MTC, NPL, MTG research, HSSMI, Moredun, and TWI. The Centre keeps sight of employability and realistic prospects for our students once they graduate, so the ILM is also working with us. Our Centre is about applied science, technology and engineering. It is well known that we might be missing half of the population (i.e. females, who are ~5% of the eng-tech workforce in the country) to fill the technical and engineering posts in the next 5-15 years. The Centre’s Consortium is assisted by WISE (via the Scottish Resource Centre for Women in SET) so we can effectively encourage more women into engineering, trying to achieve gender balance that brings competitive benefits to UK’s plcs.

This is our story so far: full version can be read here

We are looking for bright students who would like to study and research the integration of ‘intelligence’ into products, machines, buildings, factories, work environments, transport systems, and supply chains.

If you are interested, find more info here.

Functionally-Tailored Cellular Structures

Many applications in science and engineering can benefit from the control of porosity
gradients. Producing heterogeneous materials allows the properties of that material to
be tailored more specifically to the requirements, reducing resource consumption and
weight. A designed microstructure is able to produce similar strength and stiffness values to a homogenous material at a reduced weight by removing discontinuities between phases where stress concentrations occur.

Joe Holt, researcher of the Multifunctional materials Lab, studying at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Embedded Intelligence and co-sponsored by FAR UK Ltd, has presented our work on functionally tailored cellular structures via topology optimisation.

A tailored cellular structure is realised by topology optimisation of a volume loaded
in compression. The optimisation is set-up to incorporate a full spectrum of densities
of the parent material, as to simulate a cellular solid of varying density. The resulting
structure is produced by ultrasound sonication of a polyurethane foam system during
the foam rise. Targeted sonication power and frequency allows the manipulation of
density in specific regions, producing a finished structure with a density profile representing the results of the topology optimisation.