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My research focuses on creating
biorecognitive polymer probes for therapeutic and
diagnostic purposes. Biomedical laboratories
commonly utilize recognition processes between
biological macromolecules and ligands. In particular
these processes are used for separations,
purifications and diagnostic purposes. Naturally
occurring biologicals however, have a major
disadvantage of being expensive and unstable. There
is therefore a significant need to mimic natural
recognition with synthetic biomaterials. The first
step in coordinating and duplicating the complex and
physiological processes is to engineer the molecular
design of biomaterials by controlling recognition
and specificity. One way to achieve this is by
producing surfaces and polymeric recognitive
networks which have stereo-specific three
dimensional binding cavities based on a given
analyte. In the recent years, our laboratory has
developed a type of this molecular imprinting which
is termed configurational biomimesis. This technique
will generate novel biomaterials which mimic
biological recognition and can potentially be used
for therapeutic and diagnostic devices. By
incorporating degradable components into these
polymeric networks, our probes will then be able to
be cleared from the body upon completion of their
task. |
