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Author ORCID Identifier

N/A

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Chemistry

Year Degree Awarded

2016

Month Degree Awarded

February

First Advisor

Sankaran Thayumanavan

Subject Categories

Organic Chemistry | Polymer Chemistry

Abstract

Stimuli responsive polymer assemblies have been long investigated for drug application due to their flexibility for surface functionalization to achieve desired interfacial property and capability of acting as a host for payloads encapsulation. These interfacial and host-guest properties are very critical and need to be customized really depending on nature of cargos and specific delivery application. More importantly, these properties are always desired to be adaptable in different environments. For instance, adjustable interfacial property can facilitate the carrier to overcome a variety of different barriers before it reach the target while changeable host-guest property allows to selectively releasing the payload in targets. This dissertation mainly focuses on investigating the correlation between these microscopic properties of polymer assembly and the custom-designed polymer structures. Guided by understanding from this structure-property investigation, we aim on manipulating the polymer assembly using rationally designed stimuli-responsiveness as a handle to achieve desirable interfacial and host-guest properties that are potentially useful for specific drug delivery application. We believe the fundamental findings from this dissertation have potential to profoundly impact a broad spectrum of drug delivery fields including multistage delivery (chapter 3), combinational delivery (chapter 4), hydrophobic drug delivery (chapter 2), and biomacromolecule delivery (chapter 5).

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/7900624.0

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