Our research integrates synthetic biology and bio-inspired chemical engineering, to enable environmentally-friendly production of functional bio-based materials, ranging from nanoemulsions, nanocapsules, and core-shell nanoparticles, for use as delivery systems in (bio)pharmaceutical and agricultural sector.

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Modular design of peptides for functional materials

Peptides are short informational polymers made up of amino acids. They are increasingly viewed as building blocks to form discrete nanoscale objects, and/or self-assemble into nanostructured materials. With 20 naturally occurring amino acids, there is a large sequence and structural solution space for design and manufacture of peptide-based functional materials. Therefore, we carried out fundamental studies to extend our understanding of sequence-to-structure relationships in proteins, and potentially provide materials for applications in bionanotechnology.

Related to this research avenue, Dr David Wibowo was awarded a competitive Early Career Researcher Grant by Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (only awarded four annually). The grant will be used to develop innovative synthesis techniques to produce core-shell hybrid materials tailored for oral delivery of chemotherapy drugs. This will be achieved by combining bioengineering to produce biopolymers displaying functional peptides with bio-inspired chemical engineering to construct inorganics, leading to the formation of multifunctional inorganic shells that coat drug-loaded biopolymers.

Overview of the project is explained in the 3-minute video as follow.

Selected publications:

  1. Langmuir 2017, 33, 32:, pp. 7957–7967. PDF
  2. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 2017, 121, 27, pp. 14658–14667. PDF
  3. (Invited Review) Advances in Colloid and Interface Science 2016, 236, pp. 83–100. PDF
  4. Langmuir 2016, 32, 3: pp. 822–830. PDF
  5. Langmuir 2015, 31, 6, pp. 1999–2007. PDF
  6. Chemical Communications 2014, 50, pp. 11325–11328. PDF

Engineering cell factories for production of biomaterials

We aim to achieve scalable and sustainable manufacturing processes of functional biomaterials through integrated biomolecular and bioprocess engineering. By engineering microbial cell factories, we produced high-quality bio-based products, including particulate biopolymers for use as therapeutic carriers (1), antimicrobial pexiganan (2-4), biosurfactants for stabilisation of emulsions and foams (5), protein antigens for vaccines (6), and hyaluronan for wound healing (7).

Selected publications:

  1. (Invited Review) Biomacromolecules 2019, 20, 9, pp. 3213–3232. PDF
  2. (Invited Review) Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 2019, 103, 2, pp. 659-671. PDF
  3. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 2018, 102, 20, pp. 8763-8772. PDF
  4. AMB Express 2018, 8, 1, pp. 6. PDF
  5. Biotechnology and Bioengineering 2017, 114, 2, pp. 335–343. PDF
  6. Vaccine 2017, 35, 1, pp. 77–83. PDF
  7. Biochemical Engineering Journal 2010, 53, 1, pp. 44–51. PDF

Sustained release of agrochemicals

Our oil-core silica-shell hybrid nanoparticles were demonstrated able to encapsulate poorly-water-soluble pesticides, achieving high loading capacity, cargo-protection ability, and sustained-release properties (1-3). The capacity of these nanoparticles to release the encapsulated pesticidies in a sustained manner led to their use as effective delivery systems for eliminating termite colonies in both laboratory settings (3) and field trials (1).

Selected publications:

  1. Heliyon 2019, 5, 8, pp. e02277. PDF
  2. Langmuir 2017, 33, 23, pp. 5777–5785. PDF
  3. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2014, 62, 52, pp. 12504–12511. PDF

Therapeutic delivery to solid tumours and cancer cells

We aim to understand how physicochemical properties of our novel nanoparticles influence the nanoparticles' delivery performances toward tumours and cancer cells. In this regards, the physicochemical properties we investigated included materials that composed the nanoparticles (i.e. lipid, polymer and inorganics), as well as surface chemistries (i.e. passive- and active targeting) (4-6), drug-loading capacities (2) and stiffnesses (1, 3, 4) of the nanoparticles.

Selected publications:

  1. Science Advances 2020, 6, 16, pp. eaaz4316. PDF
  2. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2019, 58, 40, pp. 14357–14364. PDF
  3. (Invited Review) ACS Nano 2019, 13, 7, pp. 7410–7424. PDF
  4. ACS Nano 2018, 12, 3, pp. 2846–2857. PDF
  5. European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics 2018, 130, pp. 1–10. PDF
  6. Advanced Healthcare Materials 2018, 7, 15, pp. 1800106. PDF