Polymer Chemistry Blog

Gianfranco Pasut is Assistant Professor of “Delivery and Formulation of Biotech Drug” at the Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences, University of Padova (Italy), since 2006. He received a M.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology in 1999 and his PhD degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Padova in 2003 with Prof. Francesco Veronese. In the 2001, he joined for one year the lab of Prof. Irwin Chaiken at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and in 2007 he was “Visiting Scientist” at the School of Pharmacy, University of Reading (UK). His current research interests are focused on using polymers for the delivery of protein and small drugs. Studies have taken into consideration either synthetic or natural polymers such as poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), poly (2-Ethyl 2-Oxazoline), hyaluronic acid, polyglutamic acid and polysialyc acid. Pasut has developed several protein conjugates and he has also studied new approaches of protein-polymer conjugation by exploiting the enzyme transglutaminase. In the field of drug delivery of small drugs, he investigated new targeted conjugates and conjugates for combination therapy. He has published 45 articles, 11 book chapters and is the inventor of 9 patents.

Website: http://pasutlab.altervista.org/Home.html Contact: gianfranco.pasut@unipd.it

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

Chemistry was not my first choice, I simple didn’t know enough about it. When I was at the high School, I was interested in mechanics but a great teacher perfectly introduced me into the fascinating world of chemistry. Those days changed my life because later I decided to study pharmaceutical chemistry at the University, seeking for a possibility to join the potentials of chemistry with the prospect to help people. Later on, during my PhD, Prof. F.M. Veronese guided me into the field of drug delivery where I started my studies with polymers.

What was the motivation to write your Polymer Chemistry article?

The motivation that fuelled the research study reported in the paper arrived after a discussion with a colleague, who is also a friend (Prof F. Greco, University of Reading, co-authoring the paper). We were discussing about polymer conjugates in drug delivery and the advantages and pitfalls of several approaches. We ended the talk with two considerations, first, polysialic acid has not been studied as drug carrier of an actual small drug and, second, there were not studies comparing systematically the role of the polymer in drug-polymer conjugates. We decided to undertake both investigations at once!

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work? (DOI:10.1039/C2PY20876H)

Although Polymer Chemistry is a new journal it is already recognized as one of the leading journal in its field and we thought that our paper would fit within the scope of the journal and it would be read by a large audience. Another important point is that we appreciated a lot the papers published in this journal and their quality.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

I’ll present at Biotech Conference & Expo 2013, May 12-16, Washington (DC) (http://www.techconnectworld.com/Biotech2013/bio.html) and I am planning to attend the Controlled Release Society Annual Meeting in July.

How do you spend your spare times?

I like to spend my spare time with my wife and our two sons, 2.5 years and 1 month! So you can imagine that now I do not have much free time. We have fun also with our dog, a dachshund called PEG (a proper name for a kind of “long chain” dog!)

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

As mentioned above my first passion was mechanics and still like a lot this matter and especially almost everything that has an engine, so likely I would have been working in this field.

Cyrille Boyer is a guest web-writer for Polymer Chemistry. He is currently a Senior Lecturer and an ARC-Future Fellow at the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine (School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales (Australia)).

Markus Klapper studied chemistry at the University of Mainz and received his PhD in 1990 (Prof. R. C. Schulz) for work on the synthesis and topochemical polymerization of aminodiacetylenes. Soon after, he joined the MPI for Polymer Research and became project leader in the Dept. of Polymer Synthesis (Prof. Klaus Müllen). His research interests are very broad and include new polycondensation and polymerization methods, as well as polymer analogous reactions towards the synthesis of functional polymers and block copolymers. These materials are especially designed for fuel cell applications or for the hydropho­bisation of inorganic nanoparticles. Additionally, he has focused in the recent years on the polymerization of olefins in heterogeneous phase for which he has developed new organic supports and studied their polymerization behavior. Another central topic is the development of non-aqueous emulsions suitable for the polymerization of water-sensitive monomers. In this area he developed new emulsifiers based on for example perfluorinated structures. He published more than 130 papers and filed about 20 patents. He is managing editor of Polymer Bulletin.

Personal Webpage: http://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de/70027/Dr_Markus_Klapper

Institutes webpage: http://www.mpip-mainz.mpg.de

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

In fact, I had this dream already in school due to an excellent experienced teacher in chemistry! In the seventh grade we did the first experiments and I found this rather fascinating. From that time on there was no doubt for me that chemistry should become my profession.

What was the motivation to write your Polymer Chemistry article?

This article is a joint work between the group of Ken B. Wagener in Gainesville, Florida and of the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. This work is an excellent example of an international collaboration using synergistic effects from two groups. We combined herein the experience of synthesizing “precise polymers” from Gainesville with our experience in fuel cell membranes and in the polymerization of phosphonated monomers. A highly defined polymer with excellent proton conductivity was the outcome.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work? (DOI:10.1039/C2PY20886E)

Polymer Chemistry is an excellent journal, being extremely fast, for example, our article became accepted within a very few days.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

The next conference will be in Asilomar in California at a workshop about fuel cells (February, 23-27) and the EPF conference in Pisa in summer (June, 16-21).

How do you spend your spare times?

Mainly with my family, playing with my two children, reading (preferably history books or biographies of political or historical persons) or travelling.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I am really happy with my present job. Even when I studied economy for some time in parallel, I found chemistry always fascinating. Perhaps in younger years to become a pilot would have been a real option.

Cyrille Boyer is a guest web-writer for Polymer Chemistry. He is currently a Senior Lecturer and an ARC-Future Fellow at the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine (School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales (Australia)).