posted on March 18: Chemistry professor awarded prestigious Killam fellowship

The interactions of silicones with the biological world will be the focus of McMaster's newest Killam research fellow.

Chemistry professor Mike Brook is one of 17 researchers from across Canada to be awarded the prestigious research fellowship for 2002.

Brook, who begins his two-year fellowship Jan. 1, 2003, said the fellowship will provide him with a resource that is always in short supply – time.

“I will be able to do things I am not normally able to do, because of my teaching responsibilities and administrative duties,” Brook said. “If you're trying to do something really different, you have to dedicate yourself to it.”

“I am not an oracle, I still have to learn,” he said with a laugh.

Brook plans to use the time to learn some biology, the direction in which his research is headed. This means becoming a graduate student again, taking biochemistry courses and learning to use biochemical techniques at labs at McMaster and at U.S. universities in Ohio and California.

His goal is to adopt these new techniques in his lab for use in the synthesis of novel silicone-biopolymer compounds.
“I'm trying to understand the interaction between silicone compounds and biomolecules, like proteins and DNA,” he said.

“Silicones, synthetic polymers noted for their water repellant qualities, developed an undeservedly bad public reputation during the breast implant litigation,” he said. “As is the case with all chemicals, some silicones are detrimental to proteins, but we have found that many are neutral or even have beneficial qualities. I want to explore these qualities further.

“This fellowship will give me the opportunity to move into an exciting, interdisciplinary area of science. We've had the chemical focus, now we need to add the biological focus.”

So far, his research group has had success showing that the interactions between proteins and silicones can be favourable: an oral vaccine prototype based on combinations of these molecules was developed, published and patented with Mark McDermott, a professor of pathology & molecular medicine.

Brook said the new compounds that he will study could benefit humans by decreasing the discovery time for new drugs (with John Brennan, an associate professor of chemistry and Canada Research Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry), by improving the way drugs are delivered to the human body and by improving medical implants based on silicone (with Heather Sheardown, an assistant professor of chemical engineering). It's even possible the synthesized compounds may actually have some beneficial medicinal qualities in their own right.

The Killam Research Fellowship provides funds to a recipient's University to cover the recipient's benefits and the costs of replacing the faculty member for teaching and committee duties.

The Canada Council for the Arts Killam Research Fellowships are made possible by a bequest of Dorothy J. Killam, made before she died in 1965.

Recipients are chosen by the Killam selection committee, which is comprised of 16 eminent scientists and scholars representing a broad range of disciplines.