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

机械稳定的多孔聚合物材料因其非常大的表面积(为化学作用提供了空间)和低的流动阻力(使流体能够低能量泵通过材料)而在一系列生物医学和环境应用中具有巨大的潜力。然而，传统的制备这种材料的方法受到以下因素的限制：孔尺寸控制不佳、处理时间慢、工业生产水平的低效率可伸缩性、和/或需要在使用之前提取有毒溶剂或添加剂(在生物医学或环境应用方面尤其有问题)。Ceapro是该项目的战略合作伙伴，该公司开发并扩大了一种基于加压气体膨胀液体(PGx技术)的新型加工技术，该技术克服了这些限制，仅使用食品级溶剂即可实现快速、大规模生产高孔生物聚合物产品。虽然PGx技术的核心应用在于能够快速溶解干燥的生物聚合物，但这种多孔产品的化学稳定将提供重要的机会，应用PGx工艺实现的对孔径和网络结构的精细控制来生产性能更好的多孔材料。在此背景下，我们的目标是开发新型化学制剂，用于稳定PGx衍生产品，这些聚合物基于可持续的生物聚合物和“智能”环境响应型聚合物，这些聚合物会随着环境刺激(这里指温度)而改变性能，然后利用Hoare实验室在生物活性递送和组织工程方面与Latulippe实验室在生物分离和环境吸附技术方面的专业知识相结合，应用这些稳定的多孔结构来改善药物和农用化学品的输送，产生维持高细胞活性的3D细胞支架，产生用于纯化抗体和病毒的低成本替代品，改进从工业废水中去除重金属离子的方法，并加强从受污染的空气中捕获二氧化碳。因此，成功完成拟议的研究将为加拿大人带来显著的经济、环境和健康好处。

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.