Professor Kostas Kostarelos
Professor of Nanomedicine: synthetic and biological nanoscale materials
Graphene in medicine is a very, very young child we are trying to bring up. It's tremendously exciting. Our role is to bring two worlds together. It’s like a translation of physical science into biology and medicine, and biological science into physics and engineering. That's how I’d sum it up. Many physicists think that biology is two decades behind physics and a biologist might tell you that physicists have no connection with reality. So we’re kind of stuck in the middle. Biologists think these materials are hugely exciting but not really relevant to what the biological system is all about. And that’s kind of true. Our bodies aren’t built to contain graphene or other man-made devices, they’re built of different forms of carbon.
This material has unique properties which we’re applying to specific biological problems, for example the electrical conductivity of the material, the flow of electrons across its surface. We’re trying to build devices, sensitive in detecting or specific in their interaction with biological molecules by interfacing them with parts of the human body. We focus on the neuronal system that communicates through electrons and ions. If we can start interfering with the neuronal network using super-thin electro conductive materials, the hypothesis is, that we may be able, for example, to alleviate the symptoms in Parkinsonian patients by reducing the firing activity of hyperactive neurones in very well defined and targeted areas of the brain. This could ease the tremors or other motor symptoms that you can see in a Parkinson’s patient.