Faculty

back

   Group Page

Scott Michael Grayson, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., 2002 University of California, Berkeley
Office: 4073A Percival Stern Building
Telephone: (504) 862-8135
Email: sgrayson@tulane.edu

Discipline:
Organic, Materials and Biochemistry

Areas of current interest include:
Macromolecular Architecture:
The primary focus of the group involves control of nanoscale architecture through synthetic chemistry, focusing on tailoring nanomaterials towards application to real world problems. This can be carried out using a number of preparative tools, including traditional organic synthesis, polymer chemistry, dendrimer chemistry, and self-assembly—and most often a combination of two or more.

Material Applications:
After decades of optimizing “top down” photolithographic patterning of polymer films for production of microelectronic devices, the existing process appears to be reaching fundamental limits. The ability to build structures in a “bottom up” fashion offers an attractive alternative to lithographic approaches but remains largely unexplored. By controlling the assembly of nanoscale materials through mechanisms such as DNA binding, hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions, and electrostatic attraction, we hope to investigate new methodologies for building defined architectures on the 1-50 nm length scale. Incorporation of functional materials, such as organic conductors, nanocrystals, nanowires, and nantubes represent the long term goal for useful materials.

Medical Applications:
The ability to control materials' nano-architecture also represents a useful tool for medical applications. For example, recent work has demonstrated that polymer drug conjugates offer selective uptake into cancer tissues offering a powerful passive targeting mechanism to greatly enhance the efficacy of drugs in cancer therapy. Similarly it is expected that the study and optimization of tailored macromolecules will yield useful vectors for a wide variety of medical treatments including gene, vaccine and drug delivery. Through collaborations with the Tulane medical school, nanomaterials will be designed, synthesized, and tested, in order to optimize their structure and probe their biological properties.

Recent Publications

Giles, Marco D.; Liu, Simin; Emanuel, Roy L.; Gibb, Bruce, C.; Grayson, Scott M. Divergent Dendronization of Deep-Cavity Cavitands to Tune Host Solubility Israel J. Chem. (invitated) accepted.

Giles, Marco D.; Liu, Simin; Emanuel, Roy L.; Gibb, Bruce C.; Grayson, Scott M. Dendronized Supramolecular Nano-capsules: pH Independent, Water-Soluble Deep Cavity Cavitands Assemble via the Hydrophobic Effect.  J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 14430-14431.

[ Link to Pdf ]

Eugene, Dawanne, M.; Grayson, Scott M.  Efficient Preparation of Cyclic Poly(methylacrylate)-block-Poly(styrene) by Combination of Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization and Click Cyclization.  Macromolecules 2008, 41, 5082-5084.  [ Link to Pdf ]

Grayson, Scott M.; Godbey, W T. The Role of Macromolecular Architecture in Passively Targeted Polymer Carriers for Drug and Gene Delivery. J. Drug Targeting 2008, 15, 529-553.

Cortez, Mallory A.; Grayson, Scott M. Synthesis and Characterization of Star Oxazoline Polymer Structures. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 436-437. 

Cortez, Mallory A.; Grayson, Scott M. Synthesis of 2-Hydroxyethyl Acrylate-2-Oxazoline Block Copolymers Utilizing Click Chemistry. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 438-439. 

Eugene, Dawanne, M.; Grayson, Scott M.  Cyclization of Amphiphilic Block Copolymers. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 456-457. 

Eugene, Dawanne, M.; Giles, Marco D.; Grayson, Scott M.  Encapsulation of Polar Dye within Dendritic Star Block Copolymers. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 458-459. 

Giles, Marco D.; Grayson, Scott M.  Divergent Polyester Dendronization of Cavitands to Tune Host Solubility. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 466.

Giles, Marco D.; Eugene, Dawanne M.; Grayson, Scott M. Synthesis of Polyester Based Dendrimers as Precursors for Amphiphilic Star Block Copolymers. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 467-468.

Hoskins, Jessica N.; Grayson, Scott M.  End Group Analysis of Poly(ε-caprolactone) by MALDI-TOF MS. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 478-479.

Hoskins, Jessica N.; Grayson, Scott M. Synthesis of Cyclic Poly(ε-caprolactone). Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 480-481.

Laurent, Boyd A.; Grayson, Scott M. Synthesis of Linear and Cyclic Amphiphilic Homopolymers as Unimolecular Invertible Micelles. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 502-503.

Li, Yejia; Giles, Marco D.; Grayson, Scott M. Assembly of Star Polymers by Clicking Linear Polymers to Poly(alkynated) Dendrimers. Polym. Mater. Sci. Eng.  2008, 98, 509-510.

Grayson, Scott M.; Laurent, Boyd A.; Eugene, Dawanne, M.; Hoskins, Jessica N.; Eberle, Jeremy; Willham, Kaitlin A.  Exploration of Cyclic Polymer Architectures using Click Chemistry  Polym. Prepr. 2008, 51, 174.

Laurent, Boyd A.; Grayson, Scott M. Water-soluble Cyclic Dendronized Polymers Via a Divergent “Graft From” Approach for Guest Encapsulation. Polym. Prepr. 2008, 51, 287-288.

Grayson, Scott M.; Laurent, Boyd A.; Eugene, Dawanne M. “Cyclic Styrenes as Substrates for Unimolecular Micelles”  in Polymers for Biomedical Applications, Kulshrestha, A. S. and Mahapatro, A., Eds.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington DC.  2008, 37-50.

Willham, Kaitlin A.; Laurent Boyd A.; Grayson, Scott M.  The Synthesis of a pH-Independent Bifurcated Amphiphile.  Tetrahedron Lett. 2008, 49, 2091-2094.  [ Link to Pdf ]

back to faculty-alphabetical page