Guest Speakers, Spring 2007
Date: Monday, April 16, 7 pm (Meet the Speaker at 6:30 pm)
Speaker: Dr. Donald T. Sawyer, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Texas A&M University
Location: IPFW Science Building, Room 476 for both Meet the Speaker and the presentation (Alternate Site / Overflow: Science Building Room 185)
Title: Molecular Science: Misconceptions and Simple Truths
Biographical Sketch:
Donald T. Sawyer received his B.S. degree in 1953 and his Ph.D. in 1956, both from UCLA in the field of Chemistry. Since January 1996, he has been Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Texas A&M University and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Biosciences and Technology. As of October 2000 the retirement venue shifted to Kentucky, where he is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky. From July 1985 he was Distinguished Professor at TAMU, and served as Head of the Department for the 1985-86 academic year. During 1986-87 he was Associate Director of the Institute of Biosciences and Technology. From 1956 until 1986 he was a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Riverside; and currently is Professor Emeritus. He served as Chairman of the Department (1966-1970) and as Dean of the College of Physical Sciences (1970-1974). During He was awarded a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship for study at the University of Cambridge, England (1962-63), and was appointed Visiting Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, England (1970). He was awarded a Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1983. During the past 35 years he has served as a National Tour Speaker for the American Chemical Society on 15 occasions. Professor Sawyer is the author of 310 research publications in the areas of oxygen chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, redox chemistry and activation of dioxygen, transition-metal coordination chemistry, electrochemistry, and gas chromatography. He also is the co-author of ten books: Electrochemistry for Chemists, The Activation of Dioxygen and Homogenous Catalytic Oxidation, Oxygen Chemistry, Oxygen Complexes and Oxygen Activation by Transition Metals, Industrial Environmental Chemistry: Waste Minimization in Industrial Processes and Remediation of Hazardous Waste, Chemical Experiments for Instrumental Methods, Experimental Electrochemistry for Chemists, Electrochemical Studies of Biological Systems, Quantitative Analysis, and Experiments for Instrumental Methods, and is a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was Chairman of the 1971 Gordon Research Conference on Analytical Chemistry, has served on advisory panels for NSF, NIH, and the Research Corporation, and was Science Advisor to the Los Angeles District of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 1975 to 1982. He has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards for Analytical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry. During the past three decades some 45 Ph.D. candidates and 38 postdoctoral associates have studied with Professor Sawyer. Honors include election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Special Citation by the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; award of the Richard C. Tolman Medal by the Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society; and selection as Faculty Research Lecturer for the University of California, Riverside, as Henry Werner Lecturer (University of Kansas), and as Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the 12th National Meeting of the Chilean Chemical Society.
Past speaker:
Date: Thursday, March 8, 7 pm
Speaker: Malcolm Prouty
Location: University of St. Francis (room TBA)
Title: Layer-by-layer nanoengineered magnetic encapsulation system for drug delivery
Biographical Sketch:
Malcolm Prouty finished his B.S. in electrical engineering at Louisiana Tech University in 2003. During that time he worked as an undergraduate research assistant designing and fabricating polymer microelectronics such as Schottky diodes and metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors. After receiving his B.S. degree, Malcolm continued to study at Louisiana Tech University in order to pursue his doctorate degree. His work is supervised by Dr. Yuri Lvov and involves controlled drug release using layer-by-layer self-assembled microcapsules embedded with ferromagnetic nanoparticles. He has successfully been able to "switch on" the diffusion of macromolecules through a polyelectrolyte shell embedded with ferromagnetic nanoparticles and is currently applying this method to peptide and drug delivery.
Abstract:
Layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly has demonstrated broad perspectives for encapsulating and controllable delivery of drugs. The nano-scale polymer layers have the capability of material protection. Ferromagnetic nanoparticles have great potential to be applied with LbL technology to achieve both "focusing" of the encapsulated drugs to a specific location followed by "switching" them on to release the encapsulated drugs. In this work, Dexamethasone (hydrophobic) was used as a model drug. LbL assembly was applied to encapsulate the drug with biocompatible polyelectrolytes such as protamine sulfate, carboxymethyl cellulose, chondroitin sulfate, and gelatin B. The procedure of layer-by-layer assembly was elaborated. The biocompatible polymers were used to retain and protect the vulnerable drug. In vitro drug release kinetics were investigated according to different environmental factors such as temperature and pH. An external oscillating magnetic field was applied to switch on and accelerate the drug release. The results were compared to those without applying a magnetic field.