News - full story

FRANK Caruso, director of the Centre for Nano Science and Nanotechnology at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Melbourne, has been elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Caruso was honoured for his work on nanoengineering of surface structures through polymer self-assembly.

“The chemical approaches we use – self-assembly of polymers and surfaces and the ability to engineer those at the nano scale – provide special properties that we can exploit in various applications,” Caruso says.

Working in collaboration with medical researchers in several projects, his team is manipulating polymers to attach to cancer cells and other targets by binding to protein receptors on the cells’ surface.

The main focus is the creation of capsules to deliver drugs and gene therapies. In-vitro trials of a colon cancer therapy are showing promising results and animal studies are underway to trial a peptide DNA delivery system. Other collaborations involve partners in the mining, minerals processing, electronics, photonics and energy sectors.

Caruso is one of 16 new fellows who will be formally admitted to the Academy in a ceremony next month at its Shine Dome theatre in Canberra. Other new fellows include Ray Withers for his work on solid state chemistry, John Carter for computational and experimental geomechanics, Charles Mackay for development of chemo-attractant receptors and inflammatory therapy, Hugh Durrant-Whyte for his work on autonomous vehicle navigation and sensor data fusion, and Paul Mulvaney for surface plasmon spectroscopy enabling the optical detection of electrons in metal nanostructures.