Syllabus
FUNCTIONAL POLYMERS AND POLYMER SYSTEMS FOR PHARMACEUTICAL APPLICATIONS.
Principles and basic concepts. Synthetic and natural polymers suitable for preparation of drug-release and drug-delivery systems. Biocompatibility and polymer - living body interactions, principles of biodegradation of hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymer materials and their targeted "tailoring".
Polymer systems for controlled drug release. Categories of systems for controlled drug release according to their chemical structure, aim of application and functional properties. Basic polymer systems for controlled drug release. Principles of design and preparation of the systems designed for protracted drug action - polymer oils and ointments, polymer-coated particles and capsules and polymer matrix systems for immobilisation of cells. Systems with membrane-controlled drug release and their use in transdermal delivery systems and plasters.
"Smart" or "intelligent" stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems, e.g., responsive to changes in enzyme concentration, pH, temperature or glucose level (in insulin-releasing systems) in the living body.
Micro- and nanoparticles as well as micelles and liposomes as drug-release and organ- or cell-specific targeted drug delivery systems. Water-soluble drug carriers for site-specific therapy, anti-cancer drugs and the EPR effect (enhanced permeability and retention) in cancer therapy. ADEPT (antibody-dependent enzyme prodrug therapy) systems in drug delivery. IPEC (interpolyelectrolyte complexes) and polymer-coated viruses as vectors in gene delivery and gene therapy.
FUNCTIONAL POLYMERS FOR ELECTRONICS AND PHOTONICS.
Conductive polymers and composite polymer materials, supraconductivity, polymers for antistatic coating and packaging, ionic conductivity, organic electrochemical batteries. Generation, transport and trapping of free charge carriers in polymers. Electronic excitations in polymers (excitons, polarons, solitons). Polymer based plastic solar cells, polymers in xerography and laser printing. Polymer electrets for acoustic transducers, piezo- and pyroelectric polymers, organic field-effect transistors.
Polymers in photonics. Polymer waveguides, nonlinear optics, electro-optic modulators, fast holography, optical memories, doublers, phase-conjugated mirrors, photorefractive materials. Polymer light-emitting diodes and lasers, electrochromic displays and smart windows, electrical and optical sensors (ion-selective field-effect transistors, optical waveguide sensors).
Preparation of active polymer structures. pi-Conjugated and sigma-conjugated polymers, donor-acceptor molecular systems, charge-transfer complexes, ion-radical salts. Polymer thin films, oriented and amorphous organic structures, liquid crystals, sandwich structures. Methods of polymer thin film preparation (Langmuir-Blodgett method, doctor-blading technique, spin coating, molecular epitaxy, chemisorption plasma and electrochemical polymerization) and methods of their characterization (scanning tunneling microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy).
Basic concepts in molecular electronics. Self-organizing molecular structures, anisotropic intermolecular interactions, one-dimensional molecular wires, molecular transistors, molecular diodes and diode arrays, molecular switches, memory based on hierarchic molecular systems.
Annotation
The course is intended for advanced graduate and postgraduate students. It is aimed to provide knowledge of polymers in pharmaceutical preparations, and in electronics and photonics, as active materials for functional components.
The basic terms, biochemical, biological and/or physical principles of phenomena as well as the molecular structure-to-properties relations are explained. Trends of polymer application, e.g., in gene therapy and molecular electronics are shown.