Research highlights
Erika Merschrod's group is developing new
types of protein scaffolds for use in cell culture and tissue
engineering. This exciting work involves contributions from
undergraduate and graduate students working with a range of cutting-edge
biomaterials research techniques.
A major issue in creating a successful tissue scaffold is being able to optimize the structure across length scales. A recent paper from the Merschrod group in the journal Langmuir (DOI: 10.1021/la703292h) presents a new approach to templating materials with control from the nanoscale to the macroscale.
The MUN Green Chemistry & Catalysis group is busy trying to make ‘greener’ plastics.
One way to do this is to make them biodegradable and biocompatible.
Their work on zinc-containing molecules that make this possible has been accepted for
publication in the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry. They have also contributed
a cover picture shown here. It shows a butterfly-shaped dimetallic zinc alkyl complex
prepared here, with the University in the background. The compounds can perform ring-opening
polymerization of rac-lactide and ε-caprolactone under conventional heating or upon microwave
irradiation.