| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/H025367/1 |
| Title: |
NMR Studies of the Early Stages of Aggregation Phenomena |
| Principal Investigator: |
Day, Dr IJ |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Chemistry |
| Organisation: |
University of Sussex |
| Scheme: |
First Grant - Revised 2009 |
| Starts: |
01 March 2010 |
Ends: |
29 February 2012 |
Value (£): |
95,403
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| No relevance to Underpinning Sectors |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
| Panel Date | Panel Name | Outcome |
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01 Dec 2009
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Physical Sciences Panel - Chemistry
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Announced
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Aggregation phenomena are the coming together of small molecular fragments to form larger, often non-covalent, structures and are important across a wide range of physical and biological sciences. For example, polymer aggregates are being developed as novel drug delivery platforms, designed to release a drug under certain predetermined physiological conditions, or the formation of insoluble protein and peptide assemblies is implicated in a number of diseases.Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is ubiquitous in its application across chemistry and has found great application in structural biology. Its success has been more limited in the investigation of aggregation phenomena, mainly being applied to the determination of thermodynamic parameters, with few examples of its use to study the kinetics of the aggregation process. The high degree of resonance overlap observed for molecular aggregates tends to preclude the use of high resolution methods, however, the determination of molecular sizes via the distribution of diffusion coefficients is still potentially tractable. For instance, polymer molecular weight distribution profiles have been determined using these NMR spectroscopic techniques.This proposal seeks to develop a time-resolved diffusion NMR methodology suitable for probing changes in aggregation state as a function of time. The proposal will focus on two complimentary aims. The first developing data analysis techniques suitable for the extraction of time-dependent distributions of diffusion coefficients during the aggregation process. This will allow information to be gained on the kinetics of the aggregation process in addition to the diffusion coefficient information. The second approach will extend the idea of chromatographic NMR to size-exclusion chromatography. The aim here is to improve the diffusion resolution by application of a in-situ chromatographic stationary phase to spread-out the distribution of diffusion coefficients. The combination of both methods should prove a powerful technique for probing aggregation phenomena in solution.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.sussex.ac.uk |