Stimuli-responsive polymer brushes to overcome biotransport barriers

Ramya Kumar

ramyakumar@mines.edu

Adam Humpal

ahumpal@mines.edu

The human body presents many diffusion barriers that limit the efficacy of therapeutic drug delivery. A prominent challenge is presented by the eye, where drugs administer via eye drops must cross two biphasic (oily to watery, or vice versa) layers. This problem leads to increased dosages, which are costly and increase side effects from off-target delivery. We seek to overcome this diffusion barrier by engineering polymer-coated nanoparticles that through conformational rearrangements of the polymer brushes can rapidly bypass biphasic interfaces. By controlling the brush chemistry and architecture, the optimal nanoparticle platform will be determined. The student who works on this project will become familiar with controlled radical polymerization techniques, namely ATRP, and will be trained on characterization techniques such as spectroscopic ellipsometry, dynamic light scattering, thermogravimetric analysis, and UV/Vis spectroscopy. Additionally, the student will develop the skills to analyze the data provided by the aforementioned characterization techniques and synthesis the results into meaningful reports. The time breakdown for this project is as follows: 40% sample synthesis, 30% sample characterization, 10% data analysis and compilation.

The PhD student mentor is co-advised between 2 labs (Prof. Anuj Chauhan)

Grand Challenge: Engineer better medicines.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.macromol.7b00450

adam humpal, ahumpal@mines.edu