Dr. Greg Tew of the University of Massachusetts

Professor Greg Tew of the University of Massachusetts will present    "Building Simple Mimics of Natural Proteins: From Novel Materials to Intracellular Delivery"   on September 12, 2018 at 4:10pm in Neville Hall, Room 3     Our primary research aim is to create new materials using a combination of principles, many of which are inspired by biology.  The combination of unique molecular scaffolds and guanidinium-rich side chains has produced an array of polymers with robust transduction (and delivery) activity.  In this lecture, we will discuss our molecular design and chemical synthesis approach that has generated successfully mimics of protein transduction domains (PTDs), like HIV-TAT.  Using ROMP, we have successfully developed an array of PTDs.  We will discuss a detailed structure-activity relationship of a new PTD family of polymers and demonstrate their delivery of cargo into human primary T cells.  Successfully delivered cargoes include siRNA, whole proteins, and full-size antibodies.  Expanding the scope of biomimetic design, these principles were extended to new amphiphilic co-networks inspired by Resilin, a member of intrinsically disordered proteins.  They demonstration 100% resilience even at 300% strain and provide robust access to the co-continuous self-assembly morphology.  As model networks, cavitation within soft matter is being studied.