Maynard, Heather D.

Biography

Heather D. Maynard is the Dr. Myung Ki Hong Professor in Polymer Science, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and a founding member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. She is also the Co-Director of the National Science Foundation BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform. Maynard is a worldwide leader in the area of protein-polymer conjugates, which are important therapeutics for a variety of diseases. She develops new synthetic methods to make the materials, invents new polymers to improve properties such as stability, and demonstrates preclinical efficacy of her conjugates with an eye towards translation for human health. Maynard also works in the area of smart materials for precision medicine: materials that respond to disease states in the body. Maynard is elected to the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She is an American Chemical Society, Leverhulme, Kavli Frontiers, and Royal Society of Chemistry Fellow. Maynard’s research and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards including the American Chemical Society Arthur Cope Scholar Award, Herman Mark Senior Scholar Award, Macrogroup UK Medal for Outstanding Achievement, Fulbright Specialist Award, and Hanson- Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching. She was a member of the US Defense Science Study Group and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Maynard was born in Rochester, NY and received her BS in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; a MS in Materials Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara; PhD from the California Institute of Technology; and was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).

Research Interests

Research in the Maynard group lies at the frontiers of polymer chemistry and medicine. We are equally excited about fundamental science as we are about application in drug delivery.  Currently the Maynard group is focusing on three main areas:

1. Protein-polymer conjugates. Protein conjugates are widely used in medicine; there are over thirty approved by the FDA.  Our group has made extensive fundamental contributions to this field.  For example, we showed that controlled radical polymerizations could be used to graft to and graft from proteins.  Recent work has been focused on exploring gold(III) oxidative addition complexes to synthesize S-arylated biomolecules.  These are being exploited to prepare complex protein-polymer conjugates such as block conjugates and heteroconjungates.

2. Responsive drugs. Materials that respond to release a drug only when and where needed in the body are called responsive drugs.  These are important to prevent symptoms of a disease or to lower off targeting effects.  A major effort of the group is to prepare materials that sense low glucose levels to release the hypoglycemia drug glucagon.  For example, block copolymers with 2-acrylamidophenylboronic acid units that change the lower critical solution temperature of poly(N- isopropylacrylamide) upon binding to glucose were synthesized such that at the counterregulatory sugar levels, glucagon is revealed.  The micelles were shown to treat and prevent hypoglycemia in mice.  This research is ongoing, with current concentration on creating nanoparticles to treat nocturnal hypoglycemia.  We also focus on fundamental problems within this field, for example, developing new self-immolative linkers.

3. Bioderived materials. We are interested in the synthesis of biomimetic and bioderived materials.  In the past, we made polymers that mimic/incorporate natural molecules such as heparin and trehalose to stabilize important therapeutics to storage conditions. Currently, our interests are focused on preparing materials that mimic natural molecules called depsides.  We are exploring mimics of depsides utilizing polymers of hydroxybenzoic acids and are generating novel depsides themselves using high throughput systems biology approaches.