Biomaterials Discovery researchers awarded prizes for their talks at 2023 BDI Research Symposium

Aishah Nasir presented her talk on using biomaterial bioinstructive polymer chemistries and micro-topographies to define culture conditions for creating translational stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte models. These findings were discovered under the Biomaterials Discovery EPSRC Programme Grant and Impact Acceleration Account grant. This work also forms the basis of public and patient involvement work, HeART,  which led to a community-made lab coat decorated in images inspired from biomaterial screening tools used across Biomaterial Discovery projects. The lab coat has toured across Nottingham at public outreach events and has recently made it to Boston Massachusetts where it was featured on the Stem Cell Podcast at this year’s International Society for Stem Cell Research conference. This work has also won this year’s School of Medicine Community Contribution Annual Staff Award.

Karina Lins, who presented her work on the development of neonatal medical devices with reduced infection risk, said:

"Biofilm-device-associated infections are particularly severe for preterm infants, causing mortality and long-term disabilities. Aiming to address this problem preventively, we propose the development of non-bactericidal, anti-biofilm polymers as coatings for medical devices used in neonatal intensive care.  Our coated devices have reduced the biofilm formation of clinically-relevant bacterial species by ten-fold in vitro, and we are excited to explore in vivo studies soon. Besides the pleasure of sharing such important research with the community, I was thrilled to be selected among the best posters and oral presentations on that day! Thank you to all those involved – I’m looking forward to the next steps on our journey of developing devices that can help to save premature babies’ lives".