(398bs) Zwitterionic Conjugated Polymers and Their Application in Biosensing

As a group of emerging biomaterials, conjugated polymers have attracted significant interests for diagnosis, imaging and therapy. Conjugated polymers have been used as core components to improve communications between bioelectronic devices and biological systems by delivering/detecting lower electrical signals. However, conjugated polymers are originally designed for non-biological and non-aqueous systems and have several intrinsic drawbacks. Nonspecific adsorption of biomacromolecules on bioelectronic devices reduces their sensitivity and performance, and triggers foreign body response that eventually leads to the failure of embedded devices. In this presentation, I will show you how we designed, synthesized and characterized novel zwitterionic conjugated materials to address the challenges associated with the conventional conjugated polymers. Through these studies, we developed a better understanding of the structure-function-property relationships of zwitterionic materials, which will help us to design advanced and high-performance materials for a variety of biomedical applications in the future.