Jian Yang

Equity Interest - Non-publicly traded entity ( e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)

Creating Safe Biodegradable Photoluminescent Implant Polymers

The success of this proposal will result in the discovering and understanding the only kind of biodegradable photoluminescent polymers (BPLPs) that intrinsically emit detectable fluorescence from the body. Based on our recent exciting development on BPLPs, we propose to further unveil the intriguing fluorescence mechanism of BPLPs and develop a methodology for custom-designing multiple classes of BPLPs to meet the versatile needs in biology and medicine. We will also demonstrate BPLP nanoparticles (biodegradable polymeric 'quantum dots') as safe in vivo imaging probes for cancer targeting and imaging. Traditional imaging agents such as organic dyes or quantum dots (QDs) are just 'imaging agents'. They cannot act as implant materials such as drug delivery vehicles or tissue engineering scaffolds. BPLPs are the only polymeric biomaterials that can serve as not only in vivo safe implant materials but also in vivo fluorescent imaging probes without incorporating traditional organic dyes or QDs thus eliminating concerns on photobleaching, low dye-conjugation ratio, and toxicity for in vivo medical applications. The success of this proposal will innovate the biodegradable implant polymers, result in new tools and methods for tracking drug delivery process and therapeutic efficacy, and monitoring structure, composition, and function of engineered tissues in real time quantitatively and non-invasively. The development of BPLPs will have huge impacts on a broad range of fields in biology and medicine including biosensing, cellular imaging, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and theranostic nanomedicine.