Stephen Bromfield
Self-Assembling Heparin Binders

Project Overview

I did my undergraduate degree in York and my final year project in Indutsry at Lubrizol. In Dave's group, I am interested in developing a variety of systems which can bind to and/or sense heparin with ultra-high affinity in biologically relevant, highly competitive media. Some of our synthetic nanosystems have applications as heparin-rescue agents, for use after major surgery. Currently, heparin, which is an anti-coagulant, is removed from patients' bloodstreams using protamine, which causes many adverse reactions. We hope that our new systems will replace protamine and significantly enhance the treatment of patients in post-surgical care. There are many fundamental questions to solve when binding a biological polyanion such as heparin - not least, how do you achieve selective binding for heparin over the other polyanions present within the bloodstream.