Chemistry Seminar Featuring Prof. Eric Appel, Stanford University, "Supramolecular (Bio)materials: From fundamentals to advanced healthcare solutions"

Hosted by Prof. Matthew Becker, Ph.D

Abstract:
Supramolecular (bio)materials exhibit highly useful properties that are impossible with traditional materials but crucial for a wide variety of emerging applications in industry or biomedicine. These materials typically employ enthalpy-dominated crosslinking interactions that become more dynamic at elevated temperatures, leading to significant softening. Herein, we will discuss the development of a supramolecular hydrogel platform exploiting dynamic and multivalent interactions between biopolymers and nanoparticles that are strongly entropically driven, providing alternative temperature dependencies than typical for materials of this type. We will discuss the implications of these crosslinking thermodynamics on the observed mechanical properties, demonstrating that tuning the thermodynamics and kinetics of these crosslinking interactions enable broad modulation of the mechanical properties of these materials,
including their shear-dependent viscosities, temperature responsiveness, self-healing, and cargo encapsulation and controlled release. In particular, these materials exhibit viscous flow under shear stress (shear-thinning) and rapid recovery of mechanical properties when the applied stress is relaxed (self-healing), affording facile processing though direct injection or spraying approaches, making then well served for applications in industry and biomedicine. Moreover, the hierarchical construction of these biphasic
hydrogels enables innovative approaches to drug formulation and delivery as a diverse array of compounds to be entrapped and delivered over user-defined timeframes ranging from days to months. We demonstrate that these unique characteristics can be leveraged to generate vaccines exhibiting greatly enhanced magnitude, quality, and durability of humoral immune responses. Overall, this talk will illustrate our recent efforts exploiting dynamic and multivalent interactions between polymers and nanoparticles to generate hydrogel materials exhibiting properties not previously observed in biomaterials and affording unique opportunities in industry and biomedicine.

To learn more about Prof. Appel's research, please visit:
https://mse.stanford.edu/person/eric-appel