The future for academic publishers lies in navigating research, not distributing it

The world of scholarly publishing is in upheaval. As the open science and open research movements rapidly gain momentum, the access restrictions and paywalls of many publishers put them at odds with growing parts of the research community. Mattias Björnmalm suggests there is one way for publishers to once again become central, valued members of the research community: by pivoting from a focus on research distribution to processing and interpretation. A key challenge today is making sense of the enormous amount of new information constantly being generated. Publishers are in a unique position to develop algorithm-assisted approaches that can address this challenge; understanding and establishing networks and connections within the research literature and identifying new trends and patterns

Let’s focus on the research process, not the outputs

The outsized importance of publications has meant too many research students focus on featuring papers in prestigous journals, despite having success in doing so feeling like something of a lottery. To Mattias Björnmalm, a strong focus on the research output instead of the research process is detrimental to research itself. Research is about increasing our understanding of the world and helping to solve problems. At its best and most effective, this is a collaborative endeavour leveraging diverse skills and experiences. Ensuring we focus our definition of success around valuable contributions — instead of around the final output — would recognise and reward good research and researchers

Particles under flow: engineering and evaluating nanostructured particles in fluidic devices

© 2016 Dr. Axel Mattias Håkansson BjörnmalmNanoengineered particles can be used to improve human health, in areas ranging from diagnostics and imaging to therapeutics and regenerative medicine, but only a few examples have made it from the lab to the clinic. The aim of this thesis is to show how flow-based devices can be used to help address some of the key challenges in the field—both in making particles and in understanding how they work—to help accelerate the development of nanostructured polymer particles

Game over: empower early career researchers to improve research quality

Processes of research evaluation are coming under increasing scrutiny, with detractors arguing that they have adverse effects on research quality, and that they support a research culture of competition to the detriment of collaboration. Based on three personal perspectives, we consider how current systems of research evaluation lock early career researchers and their supervisors into practices that are deemed necessary to progress academic careers within the current evaluation frameworks. We reflect on the main areas in which changes would enable better research practices to evolve; many align with open science. In particular, we suggest a systemic approach to research evaluation, taking into account its connections to the mechanisms of financial support for the institutions of research and higher education in the broader landscape. We call for more dialogue in the academic world around these issues and believe that empowering early career researchers is key to improving research quality

Bridging Bio-Nano Science and Cancer Nanomedicine

The interface of bio-nano science and cancer medicine is an area experiencing much progress but also beset with controversy. Core concepts of the field-e.g., the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, tumor targeting and accumulation, and even the purpose of "nano" in cancer medicine-are hotly debated. In parallel, considerable advances in neighboring fields are occurring rapidly, including the recent progress of "immuno-oncology" and the fundamental impact it is having on our understanding and the clinical treatment of the group of diseases collectively known as cancer. Herein, we (i) revisit how cancer is commonly treated in the clinic and how this relates to nanomedicine; (ii) examine the ongoing debate on the relevance of the EPR effect and tumor targeting; (iii) highlight ways to improve the next-generation of nanomedicines; and (iv) discuss the emerging concept of working with (and not against) biology. While discussing these controversies, challenges, emerging concepts, and opportunities, we explore new directions for the field of cancer nanomedicine

Separation of deformable hydrogel microparticles in deterministic lateral displacement devices

To better understand how deformable and non-spherical particles behave in sorting devices based on deterministic lateral displacement we generate models of biological particles with tunable size, shape and mechanical properties using stop-flow lithography and we explore how these parameters play a role in our separation devices. Hollow and solid cylinders are compared with respect to their deformability and their overall behavior in the device. Future work will expand the approach to a range of particle shapes and to particles with varied hydrogel composition to independently control the mechanical properties of the material

Affinities of selected affinity matured ADAPTs after FACS.

<p>Kinetic parameters are presented as mean values with standard deviation. K_D was calculated from the rate constants (k_d/k_a) and the number of replicates for each variant is indicated within brackets. Ten variants were selected for kinetic analysis. Variants of the strongest binder, ADAPT_{ERBB2-FACS-12}, with different substitutions were also characterized. The binding kinetics and melting temperatures for some interactions were not determined (N.D.). No binding was observed to murine ERBB2.</p><p>*Determined by manual inspection of melting curve.</p