Design and Fabrication of Nanostructured "Smart" Hydrogels from Biopolymer Nanoparticle Building Blocks

可以在环境中完全降解的天然聚合物制成的生物基产品作为传统合成聚合物的可持续且具有功能性的替代品或添加剂正引起人们的极大兴趣。由于许多生物聚合物是水溶性的，水凝胶的许多最终应用(即生物医学和环境)需要有效和安全的降解才能发挥适当的功能，因此水凝胶是水膨胀的聚合物网络，是生物基产品的理想目标材料。在水凝胶方面，考虑到淀粉无毒、生物相容性、可生物降解性和价格低廉，它是一种特别有吸引力的生物基块。然而，天然淀粉含有结晶区，这使得它很难进行化学修饰，这导致了化学上不均匀的聚合物，这使得设计定义明确的功能水凝胶具有挑战性。我们的合作伙伴EcoSynthetix已经通过创造定义良好的生物聚合物纳米颗粒来应对这一挑战，这些纳米颗粒易于修改并可商业规模生产。我们建议将这些生物聚合物纳米颗粒用作构建具有各种独特内部结构的功能水凝胶的构建块，使用纳米颗粒作为填充物来降低昂贵的功能水凝胶或(生物聚合物酶降解后)模板的成本，以生成明确的孔道网络。将特别重视开发含有重要生物聚合物成分的“智能”、对环境有影响的水凝胶，从而在保持此类材料的功能性的同时降低成本。定向水凝胶组合物将被应用于开发药物输送、组织工程、农业、环境修复和工业催化的新材料，特别是在每种应用中利用生物聚合物纳米颗粒的独特性质。拟议研究的成功完成将产生新的、可持续的和功能性水凝胶材料，具有改善医疗保健、工业制造和环境的潜力，为加拿大带来显著的经济和社会效益。

Bio-based products from natural polymers that can be fully degraded in the environment are attracting tremendous interest as sustainable yet functional replacements or additives for conventional synthetic polymers. Hydrogels, water-swollen polymer networks, are ideal target materials for bio-based products given that many biological polymers are water-soluble and many of the ultimate applications of hydrogels (i.e. biomedical and environmental) require effective and safe degradation for proper function. In the context of hydrogels, starch is a particularly attractive bio-based building block considering that it is non-toxic, biocompatible, biodegradable, and inexpensive. However, native starch contains crystalline domains that make it hard to chemically modify, leading to chemically heterogeneous polymers that make the design of well-defined functional hydrogels challenging. Our partner, EcoSynthetix, has addressed this challenge by creating well-defined biopolymer nanoparticles that are easily modifiable and produced on a commercial scale. We propose applying these biopolymer nanoparticles as building blocks for the fabrication of functional hydrogels with a variety of unique internal structures, using the nanoparticles as both fillers to reduce the cost of expensive functional hydrogels or (following enzymatic degradation of the biopolymer) templates for the generation of well-defined pore networks. A particular emphasis will be placed on developing "smart", environmentally-responsive hydrogels containing a significant biopolymer component, thus reducing the cost while preserving the functionality of such materials. Targeted hydrogel compositions will be applied to develop new materials for drug delivery, tissue engineering, agriculture, environmental remediation, and industrial catalysis, specifically exploiting the unique properties of the biopolymer nanoparticles in each application. Successful completion of the proposed research will result in new, sustainable, and functional hydrogel materials with potential to improve healthcare, industrial manufacturing, and the environment, offering significant economic and societal benefits to Canada.