Engineering Multifunctional Biologically-Amenable Nanomaterials for Interfacial Therapeutic Delivery and Substrate-Based Cellular Interrogation

The advent of materials that can enhance the interfaces between biological tissue and engineered devices will enable unprecedented medical capabilities in the context of prolonged implantation, and novel information gleaned from cellular interrogation, etc. This work addresses a spectrum of novel technologies that can serve a broad range of therapeutically relevant scenarios ranging from inflammation attenuation to stand-alone chemotherapeutic delivery systems. They include copolymer-based multifunctional platforms that can be applied towards dynamic cell adhesion/patterning, drug delivery, and localized manipulation of key cyto-regulatory networks for clinical applications. In addition, soluble nanodiamond platforms in free-floating or thin film platforms will be addressed as next generation therapeutic vehicles. In addition to cytokine expression knockdown studies as well as in vivo validation of their efficacy, this suite of modalities successfully addresses a key element of optimized interfacing based upon innate biocompatibility which has been verified at the genetic level, confirming their potential clinical significance.