Events - Seminars

Dr Damien Thompson provides modelling support for materials design, using experimentally-validated massively-parallel computer simulations. He has authored 30 peer-reviewed publications in the fields of surface, carbohydrate and peptide engineering.

In this talk Dr Thompson will summarise the design principles required for development of functional biomaterials, and describe recent applications of High-Performance Computing to design one class of nanostructured scaffold, called "molecular printboards", that interact with organic macromolecules in a controllable manner (Figure 1a) [1]. This system serves as a model for the design of nanostructured scaffolds for cell immobilisation and ultimately, directed cell growth. The kinetics of such multivalent (multi-site) interactions at interfaces is poorly understood, despite its fundamental importance for molecular or biomolecular motion and molecular recognition events at biological interfaces. The simulations helped identify multiple surface diffusion mechanisms, which are called walking, hopping and flying. The study shows that the interfacial behaviour of multivalent systems is much more complex than that of monovalent ones, with implications for the development of materials that interact controllably with cell surfaces, including anti-viral drugs and growth factor-loaded tissue engineering scaffolds. Recent computer-aided design studies of protein immobilisation (Figure 1b) will also be discussed, together with functionalised nanoparticles [2] and self-assembled films [3,4] for medical diagnostics/therapeutics.

Figure 1. (a) Dendrimer (blue) binding to a cyclodextrin (red) functionalised surface; control of these multi-site interactions is crucial for development of tissue engineering scaffolds. (b) Optimised protein (green) immobilisation on silicon (blue), required for biomedical nanosensors.