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Development of Environment-Responsive Hydrogels for the Delivery of Therapeutic Agents

This thesis includes two parts related to hydrogels as therapeutically useful constructs: a biomimetic hydrogel carrying stem cells for bone regeneration and an acid-sensitive hydrogel carrying drugs for cancer therapy. In tissue engineering, one of the biggest difficulties is the control of stem cell fate on scaffolds. A biodegradable and cell attachable cross-linker was synthesized by one-step Michael additional reaction, and was used to fabricate a novel hydrogel to control the stem cell fate. For anti-cancer therapy, releasing drug on tumor cells or organs while having low effects on health cells under physiological conditions is a critical requirement. Two nature polymers are modified to achieve loading anti-cancer drug while forming hydrogels which can selectively release the drug in tumor environment by acid-sensitive linkages.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:MWU.1993/8149
Date03 August 2012
CreatorsShi, Junbin
ContributorsZhong, Wen (Textile Sciences) Xing, Malcolm (Mechanical Engineering), Chen, Ying (Biosystems Engineering) King, Martin (Textile Sciences)
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Detected LanguageEnglish

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