Seminario: "Thiol-mediated chemistries for bioconjugation and hydrogelation: towards versatile (bio)materials"

Título: “Thiol-mediated chemistries for bioconjugation and hydrogelation: towards versatile (bio)materials”

Expositora
Dr. Julieta Paez
Project Leader of Functional Hydrogels
Dynamic Biomaterials Department
INM‒ Leibniz Institute for New Materials (Germany)

Descripción
Crosslinking is a critical process in producing many polymeric materials. For example, coatings, adhesives and hydrogels; which represent a huge market, rely on crosslinking to attain desirable material properties. There is currently an increasing interest in environmentally friendly conditions for polymer crosslinking and additive technologies, enabling flexible and rapid processing. Thus, the need for effective covalent crosslinking reactions in water is inspiring scientific and industrial research.

The adaptation of crosslinking chemistries to certain biomaterials applications poses even more stringent conditions. Medical devices should be in many cases fabricated in the presence of living entities (cells, tissues). This demands crosslinking chemistries able to carry out efficiently under biocompatible conditions: at neutral pH, physiological ionic strength, in presence of air, at room to body temperature and typically without catalysts. In this context, searching and adapting biocompatible, covalent chemical reactions towards the fabrication of versatile crosslinked networks is expected to find great value in next generation’s medical devices.

Thiol-mediated covalent crosslinking reactions are well suited to this purpose, since they can be conducted under mild conditions, with good chemo-selectivity and high conversions. Moreover, a characteristic advantage of such systems is the possibility of fine tuning the reaction kinetics. Moreover, thiol-mediated chemistries enable concurrent biofunctionalization and hydrogelation, opening the door for exciting applications in the fields of adhesion and biomedicine. This strategy enables access to biomaterials for diverse applications, such as advanced cell culture models for animal-free testing of drugs and cosmetics, injectable matrices for cell therapies, soft implants and tissue adhesives. In this presentation, I will introduce our efforts in this direction.

Información breve sobre la expositora
Julieta Paez studied Chemistry at the National University of Córdoba (UNC, Argentina), where she also carried out her PhD in Chemistry in the group of Prof. Miriam Strumia. During her PhD, she developed polymeric materials for sensing and antifouling applications. After her PhD, she moved to Germany to join the Dendritic Polymers group of Prof. Rainer Haag at the Freie Universität Berlin as a Postdoctoral Researcher for a short stay. She worked with biofunctionalized polymeric surfaces for protein microarrays. She then joined the group of Dynamic Biointerfaces headed by Prof. Aránzazu del Campo at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. She developed photoactivatable peptides for cell-instructive materials and also worked with catechol-functionalized polymers for tissue gluing applications.

Julieta was willing to combine basic science with application-oriented development. Therefore, in 2016, she moved to INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials in Saarbrücken as a Research Scientist. She worked with coupling chemistries for bioconjugation and gelation reactions under mild conditions. Since May 2019, she is a Project Leader at INM funded by a DFG Eigene Stelle Grant. Her main interests are the application of mild crosslinking chemistries for the synthesis of hydrogel biomaterials for cell encapsulation, tissue adhesion and additive manufacturing technologies.

Fecha: miércoles 04/12/2019
Hora: 15.00
Lugar: Aula 18 – Edificio INTEC I – Predio CONICET “Dr. Alberto Cassano”
Idioma: Español

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