Oikonomou, Vasileios and Ashton, Mark and Firlak, Melike and Hardy, John (2018) Light-responsive polymer-based drug delivery systems. In: Bordeaux Polymer Conference, 2018-05-282018-05-31, Talence Campus.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Light-responsive polymers have a variety of potential biomedical applications. Here we describe the development of light-responsive polymer-based drug delivery systems in which a photo-responsive unit is incorporated in the polymers facilitating structural changes in the polymers upon exposure to light of various wavelengths. The photoactive unit can either be incorporated in the backbone or pendant on the backbone, and the chemistry of the photoactive unit determines if the polymers change conformation/shape, degrade, etc. (and therefore the mechanism of drug delivery), and the wavelength of light to which the polymers respond. We report the synthesis and characterization of light-responsive polymers and their processing into various materials morphologies that enable the delivery of drugs with wide ranging molecular weights in vitro.