James L. HEDRICK

IBM Research, San Jose, CA, USA

Title: Hierarchical Supermolecular Structures for Sustained Drug Release

The targeting and controlled release of therapeutic agents or probe molecules to specific organs and specific cells in the body is one of the major challenges in developing more effective therapies. Central to this goal are the many materials challenges associated with the encapsulation, transport and release of such agents at a specific time and place in the exceedingly complicated and dynamic environment of living organisms. Living organisms have evolved a variety of interfaces and barriers to control the trafficking of small and large molecules in and out of cells, organs and tissues. Many pathologies are associated with the encapsulation, transport and release of foreign agents into healthy cells (viral and bacterial infections). An understanding of these processes is critical to the illumination of the molecular mechanism of disease, but also provides a guide to developing strategies to deliver therapeutic agents to specific cells and tissues. Nature's ability to assemble macromolecules into highly cooperative and functional assemblies provides an inspiration for our efforts do devise synthetic design criteria to interrogate and exploit the relationship between molecular structure, non-covalent interactions and processing conditions to create new functional macromolecular assemblies.

Our program approaches a set of clustered problems of fundamental and therapeutic interest. We have developed modular self-assembly strategies to investigate the use of non-covalent interactions to assemble multifunctional assemblies that can encapsulate small molecules and probes, and exhibit responsive behavior to external stimuli. The foundation for this platform is based on our organocatalytic approach to biocompatible/degradable macromolecules with precisely defined molecular weights, end-group fidelity and backbone functionality.