The Polymer and Colloids Group
Projects tend to dictate their own needs. When we need information to support a project, we like to collaborate with others who provide their expertise along with their equipment. We have for years collaborated with my colleagues Professor P. Macdonald on pulsed-gradient NMR experiments, and with Professor David James (Mechanical Engineering) on rheology. We have carried out freeze-fracture TEM measurements with Professor R. Shivers at the University of Western Ontario. We collaborate on a number of topics (e.g., light scattering from self assembled gold nanorods) with my colleague Eugenia Kumacheva. We have had a close and rich collaboration over the past 20 years with Professor Ian Manners on micelle formation by polyferrocenylsilane block copolymers. This collaboration has continued after Ian Manners moved from Toronto to the University of Bristol and then to Simon Fraser Uiveristy, and has been broadened to encompass other examples of crystallization-driven self assembly of block copolymers in solution.
In 2005 we were invited to join a team of researchers to develop multiplexed immunoassays based upon inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) detection. Our role was to synthesize metal-chelating polymers that could be attached to antibodies and carry multiple copies of a particular metal isotope, particularly lanthanide isotopes. Details of this ongoing project are described here. The initial collaboration included my colleague Mark Nitz, as well as the scientists and engineers (Dmitry Bandura, Scott Tanner, Vladimir Baranov, Olga Ornatsky) who developed mass cytometry as a bioanalytical technique and who founded DVS Sciences, that in turn became Fluidigm Canada and now Standard BioTools. Polymers created in this project are now sold by Standard BioTools as MaxparTM reagents. We continue to work with Mark Nitz and with scientists at Standard BioTools to develop new mass tag reagents for mass cytometry.
An outgrowth of our work with DVS Sciences, we began a collaboration with Professor Ray Reilly (Pharmacy) to develop metal-chelating polymers that could be used as radioimmunotherapy agents in the treatment of breast cancer and other cancers. (here)
Over the years, we have interacted with a large number of industries involving a broad range of topics. Our most intense activity since 1990 involved collaboration with the coatings industry, which was obliged to change its technology to meet ever more stringent environmental regulations, particularly to reduce the level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in paints. We provided fundamental knowledge, particularly about polymer diffusion in latex films, essential for companies in this field to develop high performance environmentally compliant latex paints at reasonable cost. Consolidation in the industry between 2005 - 2010 meant that many of the individual companies, or divisions of the companies, with whom we interacted with no longer exist. Since 2014, we have had a strong and continuing interaction with BASF in the coatings area.