Who We Are
We are a synthetic chemistry group of undergraduate and graduate students at Fisk University, interested in the design and development of macromolecular materials for biomedical applications.
What We Do
BIOMIMETIC HYDROGELS FOR TISSUE ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS
We are interested in studies geared towards the development of state of the art polymeric networks which possesses the requisite biocompatibility, biodegradability, stability and mechanical properties necessary to facilitate load-bearing soft tissue regeneration and drug delivery. Biocompatible polyethylene glycol (PEG) is currently utilized in the design of many synthetic 3D cell scaffolds for tissue regeneration. However, due to the linear structure of the polymer, these cell scaffolds have weak mechanical properties which greatly limits their biological applications. Our group seeks to discover viable polymeric alternatives to PEG by studying the impact of polyether-polyols molecular structure and crosslinking chemistries on the hydration, strength and elasticity of the resulting polyether based hydrogels. These studies will not only further our understanding of the structure-property relationship between the polymeric building blocks and their polymeric network, but also lead to the improvement of current 3D cell scaffolds used in tissue engineering and drug delivery applications.
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Details
| (615) 329-8619 ext. 8619 | |
| dbeezer@fisk.edu | |
| Dain B. Beezer | |
| Professor of Chemistry, Principal Investigator | |
| https://dainbbeezer.wixsite.com/beezerlabs |
