EVENT DETAILS

ABOUT THE SEMINAR
In this SEAM Public Seminar Professor Henning Menzel (Braunschweig University of Technology) will present on Polymer Coatings for Drug Delivery and Bioactivation of Implants. 

Implants help to restore mobility, functionality and with that the quality of life for the patients. In most cases, the materials for implants are chosen because of their mechanical or electrical properties, but not that much according to their interaction with the body tissue. Most implant materials like for example titanium or silicone should be regarded as bio-inert, rather than biocompatible. Ultrathin polymer coatings can be used to control the interface between implant and tissue. In this way, polymer coatings might influence protein adsorption and with that cell attachment, cell differentiation and can make the implants bioactive. We have developed different synthetic strategies for coating various implant materials. One strategy are (co)polymers to coat titanium and other metals as well as ceramics in an easy and scalable way. Using these copolymers signalling proteins can be installed. A further coating strategy relies on drug loaded nanoparticular hydrogels, which are stable in dispersion, but form films upon application to surfaces. These coatings release growth factors. These coatings could be installed not only on metallic surfaces but also on polymeric fibers. The deposition from a dispersion also allowed depositing coatings loaded with different growth factors and realizing a spatiotemporal control of the release. In this way, implants suitable for an in situ tissue engineering at tendon-bone transition were prepared.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Henning Menzel is a Professor of polymer chemistry at Braunschweig University of Technology in Germany. He received his Habilitation (University of Hanover) for his thesis entitled Rigid rod-like polymers with flexible, mesogenic or photochromic side chains. He was awarded the Followed by a Fulbright Fellowship from University of Michigan, where he worked with Dr Christine Evans on self-assembled monolayers of diacetylenes and their polymerization. Professor Menzel has numerous research interst including: application oriented problems in synthetic macromolecular chemistry, with special interest in biomedical and biotechnological applications: ultrathin polymer coatings used to tailor the bio-interfacial interactions with cells and bacteria; polymeric drug delivery systems used to implement biological signaling in biomedical devices.