SCIENTISTS AT the University of Ulster have won £350,000 (€400,000) in EU financial backing for potentially ground-breaking research into the link between particles found in sunscreens and some fuels and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Prof Vyvyan Howard and Dr Christian Holscher and their team of three researchers, based at the university’s Coleraine campus in Co Derry, are pioneering research into the poisonous effect of the nanoparticles, some just one millionth of a millimetre in diameter, on the human brain.
They are working particularly closely with around 20 researchers at UCD led by Ken Dawson, professor of colloid chemistry, and other academics in University College Cork as well as in Britain, Germany, the US and Japan.
Prof Howard said yesterday they would study the effects of chronic low-dose exposure to nanoparticles on the brain over a lifetime and the role this can have on the onset of degenerative diseases.
“This research programme is deeply challenging and entails the gathering of entirely new knowledge in the field [of] neuronanotoxicology,” he said.
Prof Dawson’s team at Coleraine are especially skilled at producing nanoparticles for study, he said.
Prof Howard’s team, equipped with the electron microscopes necessary for the study of nanoparticles, would study them to determine if such tiny particles, namely titanium oxide and cerium oxide, mount a significant neurotoxicological risk to humans for the two diseases.
Prof Howard said it has recently been discovered that nanoparticles can have highly significant effects on the behaviour of key proteins in the brain associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
There is some evidence to suggest that Parkinson’s disease is connected to environmental pollutants and the researchers in UCD and Coleraine point to studies which show that reports of Parkinson’s symptoms only begin to appear after widespread industrialisation.
They also refer to claims that pesticides also pose a threat to human health in relation to Alzheimer’s disease, but they admit that the evidence on this specific case is more controversial.
“The risk that engineered nanoparticles could introduce unforeseen hazards to human health is now also a matter of growing concern in many regulatory bodies, governments and industry,” Prof Howard added.
He hopes to be able to publish findings within the next three years.