Electrospun polymer fibres have applications ranging from healthcare materials to filtration and environmental technologies, but their manufacture can rely on hazardous solvents and pristine polymers. This project explores how sustainable polyamides, greener solvents and circular approaches to polymer use can be combined with electrospinning to create high-performance functional fibrous materials with a reduced environmental footprint.

Recent research within the Materials for Health Lab demonstrates different routes towards this goal, including the development and processing of sustainable polyamide materials, the use of the bio-derived solvent Cyrene as a greener alternative for electrospinning, and the repurposing of laboratory plastic waste into functional fibrous materials. Together, these approaches demonstrate how chemical and biochemical engineering can connect materials design, manufacturing, healthcare and environmental sustainability.

Investigation of microbial communities and antimicrobial resistance within multistage constructed wetlands used for wastewater treatment. The research examines how free-living and particle-associated microorganisms behave throughout the treatment process, including the retention and transport of antimicrobial resistance genes. By identifying the mechanisms influencing microbial removal and persistence, the project supports the optimisation of nature-based wastewater treatment systems and improved protection of aquatic environments.

Modern drug discovery is an inherently resource-intensive process, relying on the synthesis, purification and screening of thousands of individual compounds, often consuming substantial quantities of hazardous solvents, reagents and energy. As pharmaceutical research increasingly targets challenging diseases such as cancer, there is an urgent need to develop more efficient and sustainable approaches to identifying new medicines. Our research addresses this challenge by exploiting encoded peptide libraries, which enable millions to billions of structurally diverse molecules to be generated and screened simultaneously using exceptionally small quantities of material.
We are particularly interested in combining genetically encoded peptide technologies, including phage and mRNA display, with synthetic chemistry to discover macrocyclic peptides that selectively recognise disease-associated proteins. By encoding molecular diversity and using biological selection to identify promising candidates, we can dramatically reduce the need for conventional compound synthesis and individual screening experiments. We further integrate innovative chemical strategies to introduce reactive functional groups, enabling the discovery of covalent inhibitors with improved potency and selectivity. Our ambition is to fundamentally rethink early-stage drug discovery, combining biotechnology and chemical innovation to accelerate the development of next-generation therapeutics while reducing chemical consumption, waste generation and the environmental footprint of pharmaceutical research.

Research in Pascu Group aims develop functional molecules and nanomaterials that combine inorganic chemistry, molecular recognition and advanced imaging to investigate biological processes and address challenges in healthcare and environmental sensing. Our research is driven by the design and synthesis of molecular systems with optical, electronic and biological properties that can be controlled through metal ion coordination, supramolecular interactions and nanoscale organisation and provide tools for sustainable drugs discovery, including future theranostics. Our research interest includes chemically programmable molecules and materials that translate molecular recognition and self-assembly into measurable biological and environmental responses, providing new tools for understanding complex systems and developing next-generation sensing and imaging technologies.

We design fluorescent and phosphorescent probes to investigate biologically important metal ions, including copper, iron and zinc, and their interactions with cellular environments and metalloenzymes. A central theme is the development of metals in medicine and nanomedicine, self-assembled peptides, peptide-functionalised carbon nanomaterials and hybrid metal-containing architectures. Biorthogonal and conjugated peptides offer versatile recognition and assembly motifs, enabling the organisation of functional molecules into nanostructures with tailored biological interactions. Their integration with metal complexes and fluorescent dyes and incorporation onto graphene oxide, carbon nanotubes and Au-electrodes provide opportunities to develop multifunctional platforms for molecular delivery, imaging and biosensing. These functional carbon nanomaterials aim to capture, recognise or detect environmentally relevant molecular species, connecting molecular sensing with broader sustainability challenges.

By combining synthetic coordination chemistry with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), phosphorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (PLIM), electrochemical biosensing and complementary analytical methods, we aim to monitor molecular processes with spatial and temporal resolution. Our studies extend from the synthesis and characterisation of molecular probes to their investigation in living cells and zebrafish models, with close collaborations in Life Sciences (Professor Charareh Pourzand and Dr David Gurevich) and Electronic Engineering (Professor Pedro Estrela). Systems-focussed applications include sensing and imaging of cancer-associated biomarkers, unravelling cellular redox chemistry, tools for molecular recognition and the development of responsive imaging and theranostic systems.

Peptides are an increasingly important modality in drug discovery, but their production remains resource-intensive, relying on energy-demanding synthesis, large volumes of hazardous solvents and reagents, and non-recyclable polymer resins. We are developing more sustainable discovery workflows built around aqueous solid-phase peptide synthesis, coupled with late-stage diversification. Where existing chemistry is not suitable, we develop new aqueous functionalisation methods to introduce structural constraints, reactive groups and other features that expand peptide function without requiring each analogue to be resynthesised from scratch.
We then connect synthesis directly with biological testing. Rather than purifying every library member before evaluation, direct-to-biology approaches allow crude or minimally processed peptides to be screened for relevant biological activity, with purification and detailed characterisation focused on the most promising hits. This reduces solvent use, material consumption and unnecessary synthetic effort while allowing larger areas of peptide chemical space to be explored.
We combine aqueous solid-phase synthesis and functionalisation chemistry with direct biological screening to discover molecules with useful activity in cancer and infectious disease, designing sustainability into the discovery process without compromising the chemical diversity, biological function or translational potential needed to generate credible starting points for new medicines.