. . . . . . . . . .    ANM 2010     3rd International Conference on Advanced Nano Materials     12-15 September 2010 - Agadir, Morocco Back    Abstract ANMM209 SELF-ASSEMBLED SUPRAMOLECULAR POLYMER NANOSTRUCTURES FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS Yi Yan Yang, Chuan Yang, Jeremy P. K. Tan, Shrinivas Venkataraman, Ashlynn Lee, Ying Zhang and James L. Hedrick Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, 31 Biopolis Way, The Nanos, Singapore 138669, Singapore . The targeting and controlled release of therapeutic agents or probe molecules to specific organs and specific cells in the body is one of the major challenges in developing more effective therapies.  Central to this goal are the many material challenges associated with the encapsulation, transport and release of such agents at a specific time and place in the exceedingly complicated and dynamic environment of living organisms. Living organisms have evolved a variety of interfaces and barriers to control the trafficking of small and large molecules in and out of cells, organs and tissues. An understanding of these processes provides a guide to developing strategies to deliver therapeutic agents to specific cells and tissues. Nature's ability to assemble macromolecules into highly cooperative and functional assemblies provides an inspiration for our efforts to devise synthetic design criteria to interrogate and exploit the relationship between molecular structure, non-covalent interactions and processing conditions to develop new functional macromolecular assemblies for drug and cell delivery. In this talk, I will introduce several self-assembly strategies to investigate the use of non-covalent interactions to assemble multifunctional assemblies that can encapsulate small molecules, macromolecules with high loading level and cells with good biocompatibility, and exhibit ability of therapeutic efficacy both in vitro and in vivo. . © nanoAC . . . . . . . . . .

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