报告题目：Polymer based Nanosystems and Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

报 告 人：Ravin Narain（阿尔伯塔大学）

主 持 人：边黎明教授

报告时间：2025年3月31日（星期一）上午10:00-11:30

报告地点：华南理工大学广州国际校区C1b-114

主办单位：生物医学科学与工程学院

                                        2025年3月24日

报告人简介：

Ravin Narain, PhD, P.Eng, FRSC is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada. Prof. Narain has made significant contributions to research on the design, fabrication, and characterization of novel carbohydrate based materials (glycopolymers, hydrogels and nanomaterials) for a wide range of applications. His research has also covered biomaterials, nanomedicine and regenerative medicine, with an emphasis on developing advanced materials as cancer therapeutics, anti-fouling and anti-microbial uses, and cell/tissue engineering advances. He has published over 250 articles in peer-reviewed and high impact journals and has edited several books namely Engineered Carbohydrate-Based Materials for Biomedical Applications (Wiley), Chemistry of Bioconjugates (Wiley), Glycopolymers: Synthesis and Applications (Smithers & Rapra), and Polymers and Nanomaterials for Gene Therapy (Woodhead Publishing & Elsevier). He was section editor for the second edition of the book – Comprehensive Glycoscience (Elsevier). He is also on the Editorial Board for Frontiers in Chemistry (Polymer Chemistry), Polymer Chemistry (RSC), Biomacromolecules (ACS) and Polymers (MDPI). He was the recipient for a Distinguished Visiting Scientist Award from CSIRO (Manufacturing), Melbourne, Australia (2017-2018). He was also appointed as the Bualuang ASEAN Chair Professor in Research at Thammasat University, Pathum Thani, Thailand (2022- 2024)

报告摘要：

Recent developments in polymer science and organic chemistry have allowed the molecular design, engineering and fabrication of advanced and tailor-made materials for a wide range of applications. In particular, the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization has shown to be an excellent method to access well-defined polymers containing new functionalities for applications in drug and gene delivery, advanced biomaterials and cell/tissue engineering. This talk will focus on two aspects of current research in my laboratory. The first part of the lecture will focus on the molecular engineering of polymers for the delivery of cancer drugs and nucleic acid. We have recently shown that we can minimize the cationic groups in the copolymers by various approaches without compromising the stability, toxicity and gene knock-down efficiency of the polyplexes. In addition, we have also developed new polymer systems and nanogels for delivery of radiopharmaceuticals. The second part of the lecture will focus on biocompatible and non-toxic hydrogels via dynamic covalent chemistry. Hydrogels prepared from conventional approaches with covalent interactions seemed unable to fulfil some of the requirements of future medicine. Therefore, in recent years, more attention has focused on stimuli-responsive and self-healing hydrogel-based materials. The self-healing ability can offer better performance of the hydrogels, while the sensitivity to internal/external stimuli, such as temperature, pH, light and biomolecules enables the necessary environment for cell or tissue growth within the scaffold or be used for the controlled release of therapeutic agents. Usually, non-covalent interactions (e.g. host-guest complexations and hydrogen bonding) and dynamic covalent chemistry (e.g. Schiff base, disulfide, hydrazone, Diels-Alder reaction, and boronic ester) are the most common ways to prepare self-healing hydrogels, and the latter, appears more convenient to accomplish the simultaneous stimuli-responsiveness via dissociation of the dynamic covalent bonds. I will highlight the easy fabrication of self-healing and responsive hydrogels using polymer entities containing boronic esters with various polymers containing diols to generate materials with tunable properties.