Research Theme and Design Strategy: The polymeric biomaterials are build using bio-based starting materials by employing eco-friendly synthetic process, apply nanotechnology tools to study their self-assembly aspects under physiological conditions, and probe their actions under in-vitro and in-vivo to solve problems in biomedical field. 

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Biomaterial science is emerging as integral components in biomedical research. Our group is working in this area for past 20 years and we have explored the potential of macromolecular science at the chemistry-biology interface. New polymerization methodologies are developed to access bio-resources based biodegradable polymeric nanomaterials from L-amino acids, sugars, and polysaccharides, etc. The “macromolecular effect” is combined with emerging photophysical concepts for in-depth understanding of biodegradation aspects in living cancer cells models. p-Conjugated fluorescent chromophores are incorporated in polymer platform to build intracellular stimuli-responsive FRET probes in the entire visible region to study the real-time biodegradation and drug targeting in living cells. Single wavelength photo-excitable and dual colour emitting nano-emitter working under excited state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) concept was built to lysosomal biogenesis, a primary cellular mechanism responsible for the transportation of payloads from extracellular to intracellular organelles in biology. Polymer architectures were carefully tweaked for the precise control of nano-compartmentalization in core-shell single polymer nanocarrier or unimolecular micelle nanoparticles. Tumour xenograft mice models were developed to study the efficacy of these tailor-made polymer nano-scaffolds in solid tumour suppression in ovarian and pancreatic cancers. Efforts were taken to breach of blood brain barrier to deliver payloads to brain tissues that could lead solution in the most challenging glioblastoma models (or brain tumour). Our lab students are trained in various polymerization methodologies such as melt polycondensation, ring opening polymerization and emulsion polymerization techniques. Additionally, they are also trained to handle various biochemistry tools, given hands-on training in various cancer cell lines (in vitro) and in-vivo studies in animal models (mice). This gives us ample opportunity to perform research cutting-across the disciplines in both chemistry-biology so that long-term challenges could be addresses in health care industry both in India and globally.