Ryan Van Horn
Lafayette College, PA·Materials Science
Many medical treatments depend on releasing a drug slowly and steadily from a plastic carrier. How fast the drug escapes depends on where its molecules sit inside the plastic and on how the polymer chains are arranged.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
Chemistry
- Topics
controlled drug release
drug delivery
block copolymer
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Determine how drug molecules of differing water-repellence change crystal size and crystallinity of the PEO and PCL blocks in PEO-b-PCL films, using spectroscopic and thermal analysis.
- Establish whether drugs disperse as single molecules or as crystals, and whether they partition into the PEO or PCL domains, across different preparation methods, heat treatments and drug loadings.
- Test how crystal shape, from edge-on spherulites to flat-on structures, affects crystal stability with drug additives and in water, including water uptake and dissolution of PEO crystals.
- Measure drug release and polymer degradation profiles with chromatography and weight-loss analysis to link polymer physical structure to release behavior.
More about the research
Polymer chains can pack into tightly ordered crystalline regions or looser, disordered amorphous regions. How quickly the plastic itself breaks down in water also matters. Understanding these structure–property links is needed to predict how additives such as drugs leach out of plastic products.
Why it matters
Controlled drug delivery depends on predicting how fast a drug leaves its polymer carrier and how fast the carrier breaks down. Linking crystal structure in PEO-b-PCL films to drug release and degradation could help engineers design polymer drug carriers with more predictable release. It could also improve models of how additives leach from plastic products.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joe Patterson
University of California-Irvine, CA·Chemistry·Early-career
Make a library of multiphase amphiphilic block copolymers and map how their phase behavior depends on polymer structure and solution conditions, using electron microscopy, optical microscopy and X-ray scattering.
You-Yeon Won
Purdue University, IN·Materials Science
Determine how micelle shape controls interfacial mechanics by comparing spherical and cylindrical poly(styrene)-poly(ethylene glycol) micelles spread at the air-water interface, using Langmuir isotherms, X-ray reflectivity, grazing-incidence X-ray scattering, and Brewster angle microscopy.
Aboulfazl Barati
Troy University, AL·Materials Science
Establish quantitative relationships between internal material architecture and water transport, swelling and mechanical stability in scaffold-confined soft polymer systems made from mixed recycled feedstocks.
The school
Lafayette College: 1 labs on PI Pages.
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