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BioPoly­Surf – Young research­ers deliv­er break­throughs in nanotechnology

28.12.2012
The pro­ject, BioPoly­Surf, gathered 30 PhD stu­dents to study the rela­tion­ship between nov­el mater­i­als and nan­o­tech­no­logy. ​“The aim was to bring ideas and con­cepts inspired from bio­logy to the exist­ing cut­ting-edge poly­mer-based nan­o­tech­no­logy,” says BioPoly­Surf’s pro­ject coordin­at­or José Car­los Rodríguez-Cabello, a bio­ma­ter­i­als and nano-bio­tech­no­logy research­er at the Uni­ver­sity of Val­lad­ol­id in Spain. BioPoly­Surf was set up as a Mar­ie Curie Action (MCA), which is a European Uni­on (EU) pro­gramme sup­port­ing the mobil­ity of research­ers. That enabled it to receive a €3.47 mil­lion grant from the European Com­mis­sion dur­ing its four-year run from 2004 to 2008. ​“Liv­ing sys­tems dis­play an amaz­ing set of prop­er­ties at nano-level,” says Rodríguez-Cabello. ​“The idea was to bet­ter under­stand how nature works at those scales. The mul­tidiscip­lin­ary team of bio­lo­gists, bio­tech­no­lo­gists, chem­ists, phys­i­cists and engin­eers was essen­tial as their com­bined view could answer the right ques­tions and arrive to the adequate explan­a­tions.” Work­ing with uni­ver­sit­ies in the Neth­er­lands, Ger­many, Greece, France, Fin­land, Switzer­land and Tur­key, BioPoly­Surf focused on study­ing mar­ket­able nan­o­tech­no­logy applic­a­tions. These included tis­sue engin­eer­ing and bone regen­er­a­tion, drug deliv­ery, lab-on-a-chip sys­tems, and devices for agri­cul­ture, food pack­aging, and cos­met­ics. As well as study­ing and train­ing, the stu­dents delivered some research break­throughs that led to papers in emin­ent pub­lic­a­tions, pat­ents, and even promp­ted Rodríguez-Cabello to start a spin-off com­pany. ​“Part of the know­ledge gen­er­ated with­in the pro­ject is a sig­ni­fic­ant part of our actu­al know-how in the com­pany,” he says. Rodríguez-Cabello says the pro­ject was able to cre­ate new mater­i­als that revealed prop­er­ties nev­er seen before. ​“We are proud to see how our ideas could be a source not just of a busi­ness but also the seed of new ther­apies and products dir­ec­ted to solve health prob­lems in hot areas, such as regen­er­at­ive medi­cine,” he says. But BioPoly­Surf’s most last­ing leg­acy is how it brought stu­dents from such var­ied dis­cip­lines togeth­er to devel­op new ways of look­ing at nan­o­tech­no­logy. Rodríguez-Cabello says the com­ple­ment­ary views yiel­ded a power that was more that the mere sum of the indi­vidu­al parties. ​“From the very begin­ning, it was clear that syn­er­gies would open research pos­sib­il­it­ies,” he says. ​“The young research­ers moved com­fort­ably between areas — like bio­logy, phys­ics, chem­istry, and engin­eer­ing — that are tra­di­tion­ally quite dis­con­nec­ted. They have acquired the ​‘trans­la­tion’ capa­city to under­stand and com­mu­nic­ate between sci­ent­ists of quite dif­fer­ent expert­ise. And that is a pecu­li­ar but valu­able abil­ity in their CVs.” Most of them now work in industry and aca­demia in areas con­nec­ted to BioPoly­Surf, includ­ing two who went back to Poland and Por­tugal, their home coun­tries, to become uni­ver­sity research­ers. And even though the pro­ject is over now, they built up key pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al con­tacts. ​“This exper­i­ence, and the research gen­er­ated in BioPoly­Surf, put them in a very good start­ing pos­i­tion for a research career,” Rodríguez-Cabello says. It also showed that with the right mix and the right goals, dif­fer­ent groups can eas­ily over­come lan­guage or cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers. ​“It was inspir­ing,” says Rodríguez-Cabello. ​“It has not only helped to solve a con­crete research prob­lem but also change the exist­ing paradigms on how dif­fer­ent sci­entif­ic dis­cip­lines can be studied.”

Pro­ject details

  • Par­ti­cipants: Spain (coordin­at­or), Tur­key, Greece, Switzer­land, The Neth­er­lands, Ger­many, Fin­land, France
  • FP6 Pro­ject N° 5516 
  • EU con­tri­bu­tion: € 3 474 000 
  • Dur­a­tion: Octo­ber 2004 to Septem­ber 2008
Source: European Commission
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