Disputation
Due to the ongoing Pandemic, the Disputation will be held digital using Zoom. The Chair of Defence will lead the Disputation and the Defence technician will solve technical issues.
Ex auditorio questions: The Chair of Defence will invite the audience to ex auditorio questions. These can be asked orally, by clicking "Participants - Raise hand" in the Zoom menu. The Zoom-host will grant you to speak in the meeting.
Join the Disputation
Order the Dissertation as PDF from this email address. Please add name of the Candidate: a.c.gartner@kjemi.uio.no
Trial lecture
10th. of February 2022 at 10:15 AM, Zoom
Title: "Well-characterised Polymers as Candidates for Application in Drug Delivery and related Medical Processes"
Join the Trial lecture
Conferral summary
Veldefinerte syntetiske polymerer danner grunnlag for nye bruksområder, og eksperimenter som gir økt forståelse av egenskapene til polymermaterialer. I dette arbeidet har det blitt utviklet nye synteseprosedyrer og karakteriseringsmetoder for veldefinerte polymerer med relevans innenfor biomedisin, samt etablert struktur-egenskaps forhold for ulike scenarioer.
Main research findings
Polymers are large (macro) molecules consisting of parts, or repeating units. The immense importance is reflected by the action of polynucleotides, e.g., DNA and RNA. As a result of their perfectly defined molecular structure, they direct the synthesis of all organic life forms. Well-defined synthetic polymers are gaining traction in fields such as biomedical science and the coatings industry, where their specific properties lead to more sophisticated materials. Not surprisingly, some of the most daunting and prestigious goals of polymer chemists, are to control the polymer molecular structure via synthesis and establish structure-property relationships.
In this thesis, focus is on functional polyelectrolytes (charged chains) and polysaccharides (sugar chains), for potential use in biomedical science where specific and predictable properties are important. For the polymers in question, however, there is a lack of reliable controlled synthesis procedures and accurate characterization methods. The primary objective of the studies presented in this thesis has therefore been to establish such procedures and methods. As a secondary objective, specific scenarios (e.g., self-assembly and response to stimuli) have been investigated, and structure-property relationships thus elucidated.
These new procedures and studies are expected to aid researchers in obtaining well-defined polymers with specific and predictable properties that may be used in, e.g., imaging, drug - and gene delivery systems, to combat diseases such as cancer.
Figure 1. Pictorial representation of some of the research objectives.