2019 Winter Talk (Theresa M. Reineke, University of Minnesota)
“Enabling Functional Biomaterials Through Controlled Polymer Synthesis”
Prof. Theresa M. Reineke, Chemical Engineering/Materials Science, Pharmaceutics
Wednesday, February 20th, 2019 at 4:30 P.M.
Sapp Center Auditorium
Abstract
Multifunctional macromolecules have a tremendous impact on a multitude of applications. For example, the development of polymer excipients can improve the solubility and bioavailability of intractable drugs, nucleic acid delivery vehicles have promise to promote selective genome editing, and materials from sustainable monomers may lower the environmental impact of plastics. While the materials function is diverse across these fields, the polymer chemistry is similar and should be readily tunable for each specific application while remaining biologically and environmentally benign. Bio-based feedstocks such as carbohydrates and their derivatives offer great promise for tailoring materials development for a multitude of uses due to their rich functionality (high heteroatom content and stereochemistry), renewable production on an impressive scale, low toxicity, and the potential for triggered degradation. In addition, renewable feedstocks offer high glass transition temperatures, the ability to modulate solubility through chemical modification, and the utility to target delivery to selective tissue types. Indeed, the chemical, physical, mechanical, and morphological properties of polymers containing sustainable and biologically-friendly monomers can be tuned based on chemistry, sequence, and composition to yield diverse function and properties. Herein, the design and development of tailored polymers using a variety of synthetic pathways will be presented. Their application in the development of sustainable polymers, improvement of oral pharmaceutical bioavailability, and design of nucleic acid delivery vehicles for genome editing applications will be presented.
Background
Theresa M. Reineke, Ph.D. is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Chemistry at The University of Minnesota and holds graduate faculty appointments in the Departments of Chemical Engineering/Materials Science and Pharmaceutics. Her research group is focused on enabling fundamental and applied technology advancements in three main areas: 1) the design of polymer-based delivery systems for DNA and RNA to treat genetic diseases, 2) the development of polymer-based delivery systems for enhancing oral delivery of important drugs, and 3) the creation of sustainable and environmentally friendly polymers/plastics from naturally occurring chemicals derived from plants. She is currently on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the ACS journals Biomacromolecules and Bioconjugate Chemistry, and is a founding Associate Editor of ACS Macro Letters.
