2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Bioinspired underwater adhesives based on sequence-controlled polymer hydrogels
| Project/Area Number |
21K14676
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| Research Institution | Hokkaido University |
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Principal Investigator |
范 海竜 北海道大学, 化学反応創成研究拠点, 特任准教授 (20897277)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | hydrogel / underwater adhesion / sequence-control / cation-pi interactions / embolic agent |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Currently, the progress in developing underwater adhesive gels primarily relies on the fortuitous combination of bioinspired functional groups through copolymerization or blending. Unfortunately, there is a deficiency in comprehending the synergistic and sequential effects of functional groups on adhesion, which considerably limits the precise understanding of the mechanism behind underwater adhesion and the targeted designing of material characteristics.
In response to the above challenges, we established a facile method to synthesize polymers from the same pair of monomers but the different average sequences. We found that the copolymers with adjacent cation-aromatic sequences can be synthesized through free-radical polymerization, and sequence controlled hydrogels from diverse cation/aromatic monomers exhibit fast, strong but reversible adhesion to negatively charged surfaces in saline water. In this fiscal year, we studied the application potential of sequence-controlled polymer in the biomedical field. We discovered that polymer bearing adjacent cationic/aromatic sequence can glue the blood components together, forming a blood gel through electrostatic interactions in the physiological environment, which common polycation cannot. The blood gel is soft, viscoelastic, stable, and shows non-adhesion to the microcatheter. In vivo experiments showed that the blood gel can fully occlude murine vasculature without fragmentation or nontarget embolization. This work provides a new idea for the realization of vascular embolization.
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