ChE Seminar Series: Qian Chen Free Lecture / Discussion
University of Notre Dame

>>This Seminar will be held in the North Campus Research Complex, Building 32, Auditorium

ABSTRACT

Host–guest supramolecular recognition offers useful tools to create new materials with dynamic and controllable properties. Our lab has accessed an especially powerful synthetic macrocycle motif offering the broadest range of affinity in binding guests for any such known host. Through precise molecular engineering of these interactions, we can specifically probe the impact of host–guest affinity and concomitant dynamics on bulk properties of hydrogels. Tuning molecular-scale affinity affords an approach to controlling the bulk dynamics of the material, which translates to tunable release of encapsulated payloads, dictates the rate of cell infiltration, and controls the timeframe of material clearance in vivo. Certain of these host–guest interactions are furthermore able to achieve affinities approaching those of biotin-avidin, enabling recognition in complex or contaminated environments, and offering a new non-biological axis for drug homing and retention at desired sites in the body. This synthetic chemistry can also be integrated to enable communication, and perhaps even dynamic reciprocity, with the living world. The ability to recognize certain analytes affords logical application of these macrocycles in the context of detecting compounds of interest in complicated specimens. As such, the ability to leverage host–guest recognition over a broad spectrum of possible affinities affords a powerful means to control the properties of materials across length scales while also maximizing functionality in these materials.