Functional hydrogels for the delivery of biological molecules

Giyoong Tae
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, Korea

The rapid development in cell biology and biotechnology makes a tendency producing more drugs based on proteins, peptides, and nucleic acids, which have short in vivo half-lives in many cases, so are more unstable and difficult to handle compared to the traditional synthetic, hydrophobic small molecular weight drugs. Therefore, new drug delivery systems for these biological drugs have been and are being developed. Hydrogels that have the high excluded volume are one of the good candidates since they can effectively protect the incorporated molecules from the surrounding biological environment, and generally show a minimal biocompatibility problem.

Three examples of the functional hydrogels for the improved delivery of biological molecules will be presented.
1) The in situ forming hydrogel system can be obtained from the self-assembly of associating polymers. By modulating molecular structure, the mechanical and erosion properties of these hydrogels can be systematically varied over a wide range for desired applications. 2) Heparin-based hydrogel can be used as an affinity-based delivery system that has the specific binding site of many growth factors such as VEGF. 3) By employing the biologically benign crosslinking chemistry, the heparin-based hydrogel can be used as a cell encapsulating matrix.

약력
2004-현재: 광주과학기술원 신소재공학과 전임강사
2002-2003: Senior Fellow, Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
1996–2001: 박사, Dept. of Chem. Eng., California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
1992-1994: 석사, 한국과학기술원 화학공학과
1988-1992: 학사, 한국과학기술원 화학공학과