Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Western University, Canada
Abstract: Over the past couple of decades, transformative advancements in polymer chemistry have enabled the widespread preparation of well-defined polymers with specifically tailored functionalities, degradation properties, and molecular architectures. These advancements are enabling new applications of polymers in a range of fields and in particular biomedical areas, where polymer structure and function are key for the development of drug delivery vehicles, tissue engineering scaffolds, and a wide range of other functional biomedical devices. This presentation will describe recent work from our group in two main areas. First, a class of polymers, termed “self-immolative polymers” (SIPs), which are designed to depolymerize end-to-end upon the cleavage of stimuli-responsive end-caps from the polymer termini will be presented. The development of these polymers from a chemistry perspective, as well as their application in drug delivery nanoparticles and in coatings will be described. In addition, recent work on phosphonium polymers will also be presented. The use of phosphonium polymers as soluble and surface-active antibacterials as well as their incorporation into polyion complex hydrogels will be presented.