Programmable materials for protein delivery and regenerative medicine

Human tissues dynamically change their properties in response to environmental stimulation. Great effort has been made to develop synthetic materials with the ability to recapitulate the dynamic nature of natural tissues for drug delivery and regenerative medicine. While significant progress have been achieved, it remains a challenge to develop materials whose multiple functions and properties can be molecularly regulated at the right time at the right frequency for the right duration. This presentation will introduce how to develop programmable aptamer-functionalized hydrogels and how the functionalities of these hydrogels are specifically regulated with high fidelity at the DNA and protein levels. Our data have shown that aptamers could be effectively incorporated into hydrogels and that the incorporation of aptamers into hydrogels did not compromise the capability of aptamers in recognizing target molecules. Importantly, the aptamers were able to hold protein drugs with high binding strength and specificity. With the rational design of aptamer sequences, different release kinetics could be achieved. We believe that these programmable hydrogels hold great potential for a variety of biomedical applications ranging from drug delivery to regenerative medicine.