Develop engineering routes for reliable, reproducible, and large-scale production of nanomedicine

Many medicines are highly effective but face difficulties in clinical applications such as possessing poor water solubility, low stability, short blood circulation half-life, and high toxicity. To address these issues, nanotechnology has been widely adopted to advance drug delivery systems for improved therapeutic efficacy and reduced side effects. Although promising research results have been consistently reported, we still need to overcome several challenges to move forward the applications of nanomedicine. The important barriers include batch-to-batch variation of the physical and chemical properties of nanomedicine, lack of ability of large-scale production, and extremely low delivery efficiency to disease sites.

The project to be carried out in the Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Edinburgh is going to develop new engineering routes (e.g., microfluidic synthesis) for fabrication of nanomedicine and the subsequent surface modification. A wide range of characterisation tools will be employed for characterisation and in vitro & in vivo application test of the nanostructures. Except drug delivery, nanomaterials for intracellular sensing can also be tested.

To undertake this research, we are seeking a highly motivated candidate with established hands-on experience in nanomaterials synthesis and cell biology.