Development and application of highly tunable porous biopolymer and smart polymer scaffolds using pressurized gas expanded liquids

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Mechanically stable porous polymer-based materials offer significant potential in a range of biomedical and environmental applications owing to their very large surface areas (providing space for chemical interactions) and their low resistance to flow (enabling low energy pumping of fluids through the material). However, traditional methods of fabricating such materials are limited by poor pore size control, slow processing times, inefficient scalability to industrial production levels, and/or the required use of toxic solvents or additives that need to be extracted prior to use (particularly problematic in the context of biomedical or environmental applications). Ceapro, the strategic partner of this project, has developed and scaled up a novel processing technique based on pressurized gas expanded liquids (PGX technology) that overcomes these limitations to achieve rapid, large-scale production of highly porous biopolymer-based products using only food-grade solvents. While the core application of PGX technology lies in enabling rapid dissolution of dry biopolymers, chemical stabilization of such porous products would offer significant opportunities to apply the exquisite control over pore size and network structure achieved with PGX processing to generate improved performance porous materials. In this context, we aim to develop novel chemistries for stabilizing PGX-derived products based on both sustainable biopolymers and "smart" environmentally-responsive polymers that change properties in response to an environmental stimulus (here, temperature) and then leverage the combined expertise of the Hoare lab in bioactives delivery and tissue engineering and the Latulippe lab in bioseparations and environmental adsorption technologies to apply these stabilized porous constructs to improve delivery of drugs and agricultural chemicals, generate 3D cell scaffolds maintaining high cell viability, generate low-cost alternatives for purification of antibodies and viruses, improve methods of removing heavy metal ions from industrial waste water, and enhance the capture of carbon dioxide from polluted air. Successful completion of the proposed research will thus offer significant economic, environmental, and health benefits to Canadians.