With longer life expectancies, the prevalence of age-related diseases has been increasing, and as such there is a need to develop biomedical devices to address these emerging issues. Inspired by absorption columns, which are routinely used in industry to remove pollutants from chemical streams, my research focuses on the design of biomedical membranes for capturing unwanted toxins in the body. One significant benefit of using polymer membranes is their tunable binding affinity to target molecules using specific chemical, physical, or biological features. One example is using properly designed polymers to remove cancer chemotherapy drugs that are not taken up by the target tumor during chemotherapy to reduce the drugs’ toxic side effects.
