At the forefront of global pharmaceutical research is the development of "intelligent" medicines which are effective, affordable and safe, for diseases that are poorly treated (for example, cancer, infections, cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration). The ideal medicine could be taken by a variety of means (pill, injection or inhaler), but should only act on diseased tissue at a 'specific' site in the body. However, the ability to direct a drug to particular desired locations in the body is still a major scientific challenge. Drugs can easily be degraded en route to their target leading to quickly decreasing drug levels. Higher levels of medication do not circumvent this problem due to potentially increased side effects or toxicity. Some drugs can simply not be delivered to their target due to barriers within the body: the ability to reach specific disease sites while leaving healthy cells intact would mean not only better therapeutic outcomes, but better qualities of life for patients and carers. Benefits through better formulation and targeting will be very apparent for those diseases that are increasing in ageing populations, such as cancer, which is predicted to affect (directly or indirectly) 1 in 3 in the European population by 2020. For these and other devastating diseases new therapeutic regimens are urgently needed. Research into Advanced Therapeutics requires not just scientific innovation but also a changed training paradigm for the scientists involved. Many advanced therapeutic formulations are inherently in the 'nano' size range i.e. larger than conventional drugs such as ibuprofen and paracetamol, but smaller than human cells, and thus spanning the traditional domains of chemistry, biology and medicine. Developing the science of these emergent nanomedicines towards clinical products requires a new generation of researchers trained across multiple scientific disciplines. The Centre for Doctoral Training we propose builds on our existing close partnerships with leading industry and academic institutions world-wide to offer training in the diverse and challenging disciplines underlying pharmaceutical science. The proposed Centre will combine expertise in analytical and medicinal chemistry, with materials science, engineering, biology and industrial pharmaceutics, to equip researchers with the skills they need to develop the next generation of pharmaceutical products. Accordingly, the CDT offers wider benefits to society as researchers trained in the Centre will be attractive to the chemicals, engineering and materials sectors as well as healthcare and medicine. Within the proposed CDT we aim to continue our broad-based training approach, such that researchers will have innovation and entrepreneurial skills, so vital for the developing industry sector. This focus on translational and business skills helped a team from Nottingham in the existing CDT to be winners of the NanoCom business competition in 2012. Ultimately, improvements in the industry and practice of therapeutics combined with enhanced academy / industry pathways to translation offer many future advantages, not just to the science, industry and medical base, but to patients, carers and society as a whole.

'Watching paint dry' is a metaphor for a boring and pointless activity. In reality, the drying of liquids is a complex process and the imperturbable appearance to the eye can hide a wealth of dynamics occurring inside the liquid. The effect of these internal processes is to change the distribution of materials in the deposit left after drying. We are all familiar with the coffee-ring effect, where split coffee dries to form a ring of solids at the edge of the spill - of little use if you are trying to coat a surface uniformly. This project is all about the drying of droplets, either in air or on a surface; one isolated droplet, two droplets merging or many droplets in a spray. We seek to understand how drops dry and how to control where the particles or molecules in the drop end up after the drop evaporates. When do you get a solid particle or a hollow particle? A round one or a spiky one? A uniform particle or one with shells? Or on a surface: a coffee-ring or a pancake? A uniform deposit, a layered one or a bull's eye? Are particles crystalline or amorphous, are different components mixed or separated? There are a myriad of possibilities for controlling the microstructure and properties of the final particle or film. Drying is complicated for three main reasons. First, many transport processes (evaporation, heat flow, diffusion, convection) occur simultaneously and are strongly coupled. For example, in a small droplet of alcohol and water evaporating on a surface, the liquid inside the drop will flow around in a doughnut pattern tens of times each second. Second, the conditions in a drying droplet are often far from equilibrium. For example, a small water droplet in air or on a smooth clean surface can be cooled to -35 degrees C without freezing. So to understand drying one needs to understand the properties of fluids far from equilibrium. It is generally not possible to predict the final outcome of drying from the properties of simple solutions near equilibrium. Third, drops do not dry in isolation. They may merge or bounce, coalesce or chase each other across a surface. The evaporation of one droplet affects its neighbours. Moving droplets change the flow of air around other droplets, coupling the motion of droplets. Why does anyone care, beyond the intellectual fascination with the bizarre outcomes of droplet drying? Drying of droplets turns out to be a rather important process in practical applications: spray painting, graphics printing, inkjet manufacturing, crop spraying, coating of seeds or tablets, spray cooling, spray drying (widely used in food, pharmaceutical and personal care products), drug inhalers and disinfection, to give a few examples. The physics and chemistry underlying all these applications is the same, but if manifests itself in different ways and the desired outcome varies between applications. The first challenge addressed by this project is one of measurement: how do you work out what is going on in a droplet that is less than a tenth of a millimetre across and may dry in less than a second? We have already developed sophisticated measurement tools but will need to extend these further. Another challenge is one of modelling: to understand the drying process we need a theoretical framework and computer models to explain - and predict - experimental observations. We will begin looking at the fundamental processes occurring in single drops in air and on a surface and then explore what happens when drops interact or coalesce. This fundamental understanding will be fed into improved models of arrays, clouds or sprays of droplets that are encountered in most practical applications (such as spray coating, spray drying, inhalers or inkjet manufacturing). We will use an Industry Club to engage with companies from a range of different sectors. This Club will provide a forum for sharing problems, ideas and solutions and for disseminating the knowledge generated in the project.