Renowned professor joins Department of Pharmacy

2nd of August Professor Ben Boyd from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia will arrive at The Department of Pharmacy.

Ben is well acquainted with the Department of Pharmacy, having been a visiting professor in the past years, to collaborate with several of our researchers. 

Ben Boyd will be based at the University of Copenhagen for the next 7 years. His research is made possible by The Novo Nordisk Foundation Laureate Research Grant. The grants are awarded to outstanding international researchers who want to establish a research group in Denmark.

The arrival of top researchers will strengthen research in Denmark in both the short and long term and contribute to making Denmark an international hub for research in biomedicine and biotechnology. Ben will be Group Leader of a new research group at Department of Pharmacy called Structured Biointerfaces Group.

Understanding the significance of the surface chemistry of particles

Ben Boyd's research seeks to understand which properties of the surface of nanoparticles give them their functions in the human gut. Examples are particles in food or particles in medicine.

When these particles reach the gut, they encounter many bacteria, other particles, the mucous membrane, the gut wall and much more. Here the particles interact with their environment, and this interaction is influenced by the surface chemistry of the particles.

This knowledge can be used to develop new medicines or even new types of foods that interact differently with the gut environment.

One focus of Professor Boyd's research is on milk and what happens when we drink it. This research shows that fat particles in milk change from being oily when we drink them to becoming more like sponges when they arrive in our gut. The changes in the surface chemistry of the particles can cause them to interact differently with enzymes and potentially also the immune system. This may strongly affect our health.