Profile of the supervisor
Dr. Roxanne Kieltyka was trained in the field of supramolecular chemistry related to DNA and materials. In her research group, she focuses on the development of supramolecular materials for applications in the biomedical area, namely in the areas of drug delivery and 3D cell culture. She is particularly interested in understanding how individual monomer features contribute collectively to the preparation of supramolecular polymers in order to control their structure and function over several length scales. To this end, her group recently developed squaramide-based supramolecular polymers that benefit from the interplay of hydrogen-bonding and aromatic gain upon self-assembly, and demonstrated the capacity to tune monomer features in order to prepare a range of nanofibrillar architectures from nanoparticles to gel phase materials for biomedical applications.
Expertise
Supramolecular polymers – self-assembly – non-covalent interactions – biomedical applications.
Profile of the research group
The Kieltyka group is an interdisciplinary group of researchers that tackle research questions at the chemical-biological interface. Group contributions include:
– Connecting hydrogen-bonding with aromaticity on self-assembly of supramolecular polymers
– Development of minimalistic monomers for supramolecular biomaterial self-assembly based on squaramide synthons
– Tuning of the in vivo biodistribution and cellular uptake of supramolecular polymer nanoparticle carriers according to shape and size as engineered by the chemical structure of the monomers
– Development of supramolecular hydrogel materials for 3D culture of induced pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated derivatives
