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I was formerly a post-doctoral research fellow working for Prof. Morgan Alexander and Prof. Paul Williams in the division of Advance Materials and Healthcare Technologies at the University of Nottingham.
Previous Research Interest
Previous Research Interest
My research focuses on understanding the mechanistic mode of action for novel polymer surfaces with ability to prevent bacteria biofilm formation. The concept of the post-antibiotic era is becoming a reality, with patients presenting with infections from bacterial pathogens that resist multiple last line antibiotics while at the same time, very few novel antimicrobial drugs are coming onto the market. As multi-antibiotic resistance becomes widespread, the prevention of bacterial infections has become an urgent healthcare priority in order to reduce morbidity and mortality.
Clearly, it would be ideal if we could fully describe and understood the diverse sensing and signalling mechanisms that bacteria employ to determine when they are near or on a surface and if the surface is suitable for attachment and biofilm formation. Such knowledge would allow the direct, rational design of surfaces that do not support bacterial colonization. Sadly, mechanistic information is still far from complete. Consequently, we are not yet at the point where sufficient information is available to permit the rational design of low attachment surfaces as an effective and reliable strategy for new materials discovery. To guide synthesis beyond the commercially available compounds, I use computational modelling to generate structure-function relationships that can predict the biological performance of virtual materials.
Publications
Publications
Dundas, A. A., Sanni, O, Achieving Microparticles with Cell‐Instructive Surface Chemistry by Using Tunable Co‐Polymer Surfactants. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2020, 2001821.
Dundas, A.A.; Sanni O. et al., Validating a Predictive Structure–Property Relationship by Discovery of Novel Polymers which Reduce Bacterial Biofilm Formation. Advanced Materials. 0(0): p. 1903513.
Sanni, O; Hook, A. L. et al. (2014). Bacterial Attachment to Polymeric Materials Correlates with Molecular Flexibility and Hydrophilicity. AdvHealthcMater. doi: 10.1002/adhm.201400648
Mikulskis, P. Sanni O. et al., Prediction of Broad-Spectrum Pathogen Attachment to Coating Materials for Biomedical Devices. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2018. 10(1): p. 139-149.
Research Skills & Expertise
Research Skills & Expertise
I was able to significantly expand my skills' portfolio by undertaking an interdisciplinary PhD research at the University of Nottingham, namely:
Surface Analytical Techniques - Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (highly specialised in simultaneous analysis of hundredths of polymer spots), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Atomic Force Microscope, Water Contact Angle Measurements and estimation of surface charge via Surface Zeta Potential.
High Throughput Techniques - Fabrication of polymer microarray with thousands of polymer spots, simultaneous bacteria biofilm assay on thousandths of polymer spots using fluorescent readout and quantification techniques, qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
Chemistry & Surface Modification Techniques - Photo and Thermal Polymerisation, Organic Synthesis of Acrylate and Meth(acryalate) monomers, epoxy and methacrylate silanisation of glass, coating of urinary catheters with polymers.
Biology & Imaging Techniques - Bacteria biofilm assay and enzymatic degradation assay, imaging with confocal microscope and scanning with fluorescent laser scanner.
Computation - Highly skilled in building regression models with Matlab software, this include partial least square regression and principal component analysis.
Supervision - Supervised 3 project students during my PhD.
Overview of Experimental Approach
Overview of Experimental Approach
An overview of experimental approaches used to investigate action mechanism of novel anti-attachment materials. (1) Hundredths of polymer materials printed onto a standard glass slides are screened biologically to assess performance against bacteria (green pathway). (2) In parallel, polymer surfaces are characterised from high throughput techniques and chemoinformatics (yellow pathway). (3) Data generated from both yellow and green pathways are used to construct predictive models which direct to new chemistries to be synthesized and reincorporated into polymer array library (blue pathway). (4) Interesting polymer materials identified from microarray screens are scaled-up to either test new hypothesis on mode of action or coated onto medical devices for further biological assays (pink pathway)
Conferences, Awards & Outreaches
Conferences, Awards & Outreaches
National Conferences
January 2017 - Inaugural Annual Biomaterials Discovery Workshop 2017 (United Kingdom)
January 2018 - Annual Biomaterials Discovery Workshop 2018 (United Kingdom)
January 2019 -Third Annual Biomaterials Discovery Workshop (United Kingdom)
July 10-11, 2019 - Both Ends of the Spectrum – UKSAF (UK Surface analysis forum) 40th Anniversary Meeting (United Kingdom)
International Conferences
October 1-2, 2018 - The 7th Thesinge biofilm meeting (Netherlands)
October 20-25, 2019 – AVS 66th International Symposium & Exhibition (USA)
Awards
March 26, 2019 – Award winner for oral presentation at divisional competition
Community Outreaches
July 3-4, 2019 - Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2019 (United Kingdom)
March 17, 2016 - Pathways to STEM - Mansfield Science Fair
Courses Attended
Courses Attended
Biosensors, Introduction to Practical Organic Chemistry Workshop, How to make a poster on power point, ToF-SIMS workshop, Managing long documents in Word, Writing Progress Reports, Working with photographs using GIMP, Simple calculations in Excel, More functions in excel, Using Excel as a Database, Creating Macros in Excel, PLS Workshop, Microsoft PowerPoint Advanced and Presentation Skills and An introduction to public speaking.
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