Bonassar Lab alum Dr. Kirk Samaroo recently had his manuscript accepted by the journal Biotribology:
Tunable Lubricin-mimetics for Boundary Lubrication of Cartilage
The paper describes the development of a library of brush-copolymers designed to lubricate cartilage. These new biomaterials mimic structure of the lubricating properties of the glycoprotein lubricin, which serves as the primary boundary lubricant for articular cartilage. The polymers are composed polyethylene glycol (PEG) side chains grafted to a poly(acrylic acid) (pAA) backbone, similar to the oligosaccharides that decorate the core protein lubricin. When attached to gold surfaces, all of these new brush co-polymers lubricated cartilage, with the most efficient configuration lowering coefficient of friction by a factor of 2. This work was conducted in collaboration with Prof. David Putnam of the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell, Dr. Mingchee Tan, an alum of the Putnam Lab, and Dr. Delphine Gourdon of the University of Ottawa. Dr. Samaroo is the co-founder of and CSO of Dynamic Boundaries, Inc., an Ithaca-based startup company that is developing biomimetic lubricants for the treatment of arthritis.
