Driving forwards materials chemistry

The Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, John Denham, opened the new Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry (KCMC) at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory.

“This new centre provides a way for UK chemical companies of all sizes to get access to the skills and facilities they need,” said John Bancroft, Head of Business Development at STFC Innovations Ltd. “It will help them take advantage of opportunities in areas such as sustainable energy, smart packaging and regenerative medicine.” The KCMC brings together leading edge knowledge from the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Bolton as well as exploiting the expertise of Daresbury’s Computational Science and Engineering Department, with support from the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

Cyclodextrin molecule

“Daresbury’s computational expertise is known throughout the world,” said STFC’s Dr Richard Blake. “Some of the key programmes used in academic and industrial chemistry research were developed here and we have some of the world’s best high performance computing facilities.”

Its aim is to provide a national centre to drive innovative, multi-disciplinary research and encourage knowledge transfer for companies. KCMC will also act as a ‘one stop shop’ for researchers to access a range of world-class facilities and information in materials chemistry. One such previous collaboration, with AstraZeneca, investigated complex, naturally occurring glucose molecules called cyclodextrins.

These molecules are useful as they dissolve in water and can encapsulate other molecules that are water-repelling at the same time. These properties can improve the solubility and stability of drugs and are also used in the food science and cosmetic industries.

Molecular dynamics techniques, using a supercomputer for simulations, provided valuable information for predicting how new candidate molecules react and interact and so potentially help prevent any unwanted interactions between drugs.

UK chemical industry information

• Materials chemistry benefits sustainable energy, smart packaging and regenerative medicine
• UK chemical companies can access skills and facilities via KCMC
• The UK chemical industry has an annual turnover of £55 billion