(167c) Designer Biomaterial Surfaces for Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine

Research in biomaterials is continuing to lead advances in treatments for a variety of critical medical conditions.  Our research group designs and develops optimized biomaterials to address several challenges in the areas of drug delivery and regenerative medicine.  In this presentation, I will focus on our recent research in the area of developing drug delivery coatings aimed at treating aspects of traumatic injury including infection.  Current treatments for microbial infection often result in significant systemic toxicity and exacerbate problems such as antibiotic-resistance.  We have developed controlled release antimicrobial delivery coatings that can avoid many of these complications.  We use techniques including layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly to develop coatings that exhibit a range of favorable drug release profiles of a variety of therapeutics, ranging from antibacterial agents, to anti-biofilm drugs, and antifungal agents.  These drugs cover a wide range of chemical and structural properties including hydrophilic and hydrophobic small molecules and proteins.  Several of these LbL film architectures have successfully been applied to a range of medical device surfaces and have demonstrated efficacy against their microbial targets.  I will discuss our focus on increasing drug loading in these coatings and developing target-activated drug releasing systems.  Our work in developing functional surfaces for stem cell engineering will also be discussed.