Prof. Elizabeth Gilles
Department of Chemistry
The University of Western Ontario
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED
Title: Self-Immolative Polymers: Chemical Designs and Applications
Abstract: The development of degradable polymers is of significant interest across a wide range of fields from commodity plastics to medicine. Much progress has been made to date with conventional polyesters such as polylactide and polycaprolactone. However, the ability to control the degradation of these polymers in different environments is limited and they may degrade more rapidly or more slowly than desired. Many stimuli-responsive polymers have been developed over the past couple of decades, but these polymers typically require many stimuli-mediated events to achieve complete backbone degradation. Our team has been developing self-immolative polymers, a recently established class of degradable polymers, that undergo end-to-end backbone depolymerization in response to the cleavage of a single backbone bond or an end-cap from the polymer terminus, thereby providing amplification of the stimulus-mediated event. This presentation will describe the development of different classes of self-immolative polymers, as well as end-caps for these polymers, which can be triggered under different conditions. Our progress in the synthesis of these polymers, as well as their application in areas such as therapeutic delivery and medical imaging will be discussed.
Department of Chemistry
The University of Western Ontario