PARTNER UNIVERSITY

Keele University

Research Areas & Focuses

  1. Screen and extract natural anti-biofilm cyclotides
  2. Design and synthese anti-biofilm peptides
  3. Control and fabricate nanostruture on surface
  4. Explore new coupling technique for active agents on surface
  5. Modify and control quorum sensing molecules
  6. Tissue models for biofilm formation
  7. Engineer antibacterial autophagy

Department Link

School of Pharmacy & Bioengineering

Keele University

For enquiries, please contact Nicholas Forsyth.

Facilities

  • Imaging: confocal microscopy; SEM, TEM, AFM, fluorescence microscopy
  • Conventional cell and bacterial culture facilities; gene, protein and cellular characterisation facilities
  • Patient interface clean room
  • Doppler OCT, microCT
  • Laser imaging modalities
  • A range of mechanical testing apparatus
  • Biomaterials fabrication facilities (electrospinning, 3D printing, nanoparticle generator etc.),
  • Zetasizer
  • A variety of bioreactors for tissue culture
  • A mass spectrometry and proteomics unit
  • Histology and biomaterial suites, egg model and molecular biology laboratories
  • Microarray, real-time PCR
  • An Affymetrix workstation and microarray facility for whole-genome analysis and expression, high-throughput sequencing (ABI) and mutation analysis based on wave and pyrosequencing technologies
  • Cell sorting and cell cycle (FACS) analysis facility with the latest Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), two state-of-the art mass spectrometers, MALDI 4800 ToF and an ESI 3200-QTRA and transmission and scanning electron microscopy.

Researchers

Nicholas Forsyth, School of Pharmacy & Bioengineering
Paul Horrocks, School of Pharmacy & Bioengineering
Wen-Wu Li, School of Pharmacy & Bioengineering
Johannes Reynisson, School of Pharmacy & Bioengineering
Ying Yang, School of Pharmacy & Bioengineering

Olympus Fluoview FV 1200 with Fluoview software (4.1)
Extracted cyclotide from V. philippica (a); fraction P3 (b) showed good resistance of S. aureus based biofilm (c); self design antibiofilm peptide structure (d).