Steve Ellison is an LGC fellow providing technical leadership for LGC’s Statistics team and additionally overseeing LGC’s reference material certification activity at Teddington. His principal interests are in statistics for analytical chemistry and molecular biology, including analytical quality assurance and statistical aspects of reference material production and inter-laboratory studies. He is a UK representative to ISO TC334, the ISO committee on Reference Materials, and contributed directly to ISO 17034 (General requirements for the competence of reference material producers) and ISO Guide 35 (Reference materials — Guidance for characterization and assessment of homogeneity and stability).
Pu Chun Ke is a Professor at the Nanomedicine Center of The Great Bay Area National Institute for Nanotechnology Innovation (Guangzhou, China) and an Adjunct Full Professor at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Melbourne, Australia). Prof. Ke was a recipient of a prestigious International Senior Scientist Award (RFIS III, 2022) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Inaugural Supervision Excellence Award (2019) from the ARC Center of Excellence at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Australia, a Faculty Achievement in the Sciences Award (2012) from Clemson University, a CAREER Award (2008) from the National Science Foundation and an LJIS Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biophysics (2001-2003) from the University of California, San Diego in the United States. He has authored 168 peer-reviewed journal papers (senior author for 117 papers; 15 featured as journal covers) on protein corona, amyloidogenesis mitigation, nanomedicine, nanotoxicology and environmental science in journals including Chemical Society Reviews (3), Nature Communications (3), JACS (3), PNAS (3), Advanced Materials (1), ACS Nano (4), Advanced Science (3), Environmental Science & Technology (5), Nano Letters (4), Nano Today (4) and Small (11). His multidisciplinary research career has spanned over three continents and has been funded by NSF and EPA in the United States, by CSIRO and CBNS in Australia, and by NSFC and MOST in China. He has served on US, European and Australian federal grant panels, and as a frequent referee for 90 major journals. He is on the editorial boards of Biophysical Chemistry (Elsevier) and ACS Nanoscience Au.
Abstract
The global-scale production of plastics has been instrumental for sustaining the modern way of life, while the accumulation of plastics in landfills, oceans, and anything in between has become a major stressor on environmental sustainability, climate, and, potentially, human health. While mechanical and chemical forces of man and nature can break down and recycle plastics, our understanding of the biological fingerprints of discharged plastics, especially of the nanoscale derivatives of plastics (i.e., nanoplastics), remains superficial.
In 2010, we first reported on algal photosynthesis impaired by nanoplastic adsorption.1 More recently, a host of studies have been conducted to elucidate the environmental implications of micro- and nanoplastics on the molecular, cellular, or whole organism level, typically from the toxicology point of view. In this talk, I will first introduce our early representative studies focused on nano-bio/environmental interactions.2,3 I will then report on our recent finding that anionic polystyrene and poly(methyl methacrylate) nanoparticles can elicit disruptions to vascular endothelial cadherin junctions, a new phenomenon that is biophysical/biochemical and uncorrelated with cytotoxic events such as reactive oxygen species production, autophagy, and apoptosis.4,5 The last part of my talk will be focused on the effects of nanoplastics on the aberrant aggregation of amyloid beta and alpha synuclein, two pathogenic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. This talk aims to demonstrate the vast research potential towards elucidating the implications of plastics for environmental sustainability and human health protection.
References