George John's Soft Materials Research Group

Department of Chemistry
The City College of New York-CUNY

News & Highlights (Selected)

Scientific American on May 2, 2008 in the news, “A Silver Coating in the Fight against Microbes”.

The New York Times on April 9, 2008 in Technology Innovation, “Harnessing Biology, and Avoiding Oil, for Chemical Goods”.

Prof. John featured in ‘Mathrubhumi’, National Newspaper, India on March 09, 2008.

Biobased Organic Synthesis | Molecular Gels and Drug-Delivery | Nanoparticles: Synthesis and Catalysis | Polymers and Coatings
Self-Assembled Functional Architectures | Undergraduate Research

Research - Molecular Gels and Drug-Delivery

Molecular gels and drug-delivery. The self-assembly of low molecular weight building blocks into nanoscale molecular objects has recently attracted considerable interest in terms of the bottom-up fabrication of soft nanomaterials. We have successfully demonstrated the utility of biomass-derived surfactants for assembled soft materials with intriguing structures and functions, using biocatalytic approach coupled with principles of green and supramolecular chemistry. The soft materials developed (e.g: molecular gels) showed unprecedented drug-delivery capabilities in vitro with highly hydrophobic drugs. This motivated us to address a new design strategy and concept to deliver the drug and a complementary drug together, from a self-assembled, and a self-releasing lipid membrane, by enzyme catalysis.

Related Publications:

Vemula, P., Li, J, John, G. ‘Enzyme Catalysis: Tool to Make and Break Amygdalin Hydrogelators from Renewable Resources - A Delivery Model for Hydrophobic Drugs’ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 8932-8938 (2006). Highlighted in Green Chem. 8, 675 (2006).

John, G., Zhu, G., Li, J., Dordick J. S. ‘Enzymatically-Derived Sugar Containing Self-Assembled Organogels with Nanostructured Morphologies’ Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 45, 4772-4775 (2006), Front cover page feature, Angew.Chem. 118, 4890-4893 (2006). Front cover page feature.

Vemula, P., Aslam, U., Mallia, A., John, G. ‘In Situ Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticles Using Molecular Gels and Liquid Crystals from Vitamin-C Amphiphiles’ Chem. Mat. 19, 138-140 (2007).

John, G., Vemula, P. ‘Design and Development of soft nanomaterials from biobased amphiphiles’ Soft Matter, 2, 909-914 (2006). INVITED highlights, Front cover page feature.

Vemula, P., John, G. ‘Smart Amphiphiles: Hydro/Organogelators for In Situ Reduction of Gold’ Chem. Commun, 2218-2220 (2006). Front cover page feature.

John, G., Masuda, M., Jung, J, H.Yoshida, K. and Shimizu, T. ‘Unsaturation Influenced Gelation of Aryl Glycolipids’, Langmuir 20, 2060-2065 (2004).

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	Department of Chemistry \| Division of Science \| The City College of New York \| Graduate Center of CUNY \| CUNY