Polymer-Based Biosensors, Drug Delivery and Waste Remediation Systems

• Author / Creator

  Wei Zhang

• Temperature responsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAm) microgels, first reported
  in 1986, have attracted extensive attention due to their potential applications in many
  fields, such as controlled drug delivery, chemical separation, sensors, and microreactors.
  Much attention has been focused on developing biosensors because people, especially
  those in resource limited areas, need inexpensive and easy-to-use technology to diagnose
  quickly and accurately some common disease/health issues. Most of my work focused on
  developing polymer-based sensors and polymer microgel-based drug delivery systems. In
  addition to these studies, I also developed a new method to turn chewing gum waste into
  materials that can be used to adsorb organic dyes, and heavy metal ions, and to reduce the
  toxicity of oil sands tailings pond water. According to the focus of different chapters, I
  divided my dissertation into the following three parts.
  Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 focus on the development of biosensors. In Chapter 2, I
  introduce a fluorescence-based immunoassay with which I can determine the
  concentration of an antigen solution containing mouse IgG by measuring the fluorescence
  iii
  intensity of solution after the antigen reacts with excess antibody-modified magnetic
  beads and excess FITC-modified antibody. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate the preparation of
  an alkaline phosphatase-assisted pNIPAm microgel-based biosensor.
  In Chapter 4, I develop near infrared-responsive etalons and utilize the etalons for
  enhanced drug delivery.
  In Chapter 5, I separate materials from chewing gum waste and use them to remove
  organic dyes and heavy metal ions from water. These materials also can be used to reduce
  the toxicity of oil sands tailing ponds water.
  In Chapter 6, I draw conclusions for each chapter and give the future works of my
  researches.
  In addition, three appendices, A, B, and C, have been added. These contain
  additional preliminary experimental results on related topics.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • polymer
  • drug delivery
  • sensor
  • wastewater

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-y646-6s24

• License

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