Anna Barnard
Self-Assembling Dendrons with Applications in Gene Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis

Project Overview

I did my undergraduate degree in Durham and my final year project in the group of Prof Jon Steed. I then moved to York, where I have been working with Dave on developing self-assembling systems designed to bind and delivery DNA into cells. By using self-assembled multivalency, we aim to get very high affinity binding, but also build in the capacity for the delivery vehicles to disassemble and degrade. Self-assembly also allows us to easily combine different active units which can behave synergistically to achieve enhanced biological activity.