Randomness and order in the exact sciences

Self- and co-assembling soft matter

Tuesday 3 September 2013
House of the Estates
Säätytalo, Helsinki, Finland
      


Harm-Anton Klok
Institutes of Materials and Chemical Sciences and Engineering
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Harm-Anton Klok is Full Professor at the Institutes of Materials and Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) (Lausanne, Switzerland).
He studied chemical technology at the University of Twente (Enschede, The Netherlands) from 1989 to 1993 and received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Ulm (Germany) after working with Martin Möller. After postdoctoral research with David N. Reinhoudt (University of Twente) and Samuel I. Stupp (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA), he joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Mainz, Germany) in early 1999 as a project leader in the group of Klaus Müllen. In November 2002, he was appointed to the faculty of EPFL.
His current research interests include peptide/protein-based materials and peptide/protein-polymer hybrids, surface-initiated polymerization and polymer brushes, controlled/"living" polymerization and macromolecular engineering as well as dendritic and hyperbranched polymers.

Title: Interfacing Synthetic Materials and Biology
 
Abstract: Judicious interfacing of synthetic polymers and their biological counterparts (peptides and proteins) allows access to unique hybrid materials that integrate the structural and functional properties of both elements. On the one hand, for example, this allows access to soft materials with programmable, unprecedented hierarchical structures that span several length scales. In addition, combining synthetic polymers and peptides or proteins allows to synergize the properties of these two classes of building blocks and can lead to hybrid materials with unique functional properties. Taking a polymer chemist's perspective, this presentation will highlight the challenges and opportunities to modern polymer science to improve the delivery and enhance the efficacy of (peptide) therapeutics using synthetic polymer - peptide/protein conjugates.
 
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