STICKING POWER OF PLANT POLYPHENOLS USED IN NEW COATINGS: Compounds found in red wine and green tea stick to anything, retain useful properties
Colorless Multifunctional Coatings Inspired by Polyphenols Found in Tea, Chocolate, and Wine
Northwestern’s Phillip Messersmith creates materials that mimic adhesives of marine mussels for medical applications.
Phillip Messersmith is synthesizing polymers that mimic the sticky proteins that mussels secrete to develop adhesives that would work as a sealant in surgery.
Two recent papers describe polydopamine-assisted surface functionalization and targeting of gold nanorods for photothermal ablation of cancer cells and bacteria.
New adhesive exploits catechol derivatized block copolymer to yield negative swelling tissue adhesives.
Mussel-inspired processing leads to insight into the role of iron in mussel byssus and in bioinspired hydrogels.
The Messersmith Group has moved to the University of California, Berkeley!
Prospective graduate student applications are welcome.

News: Messersmith group research covered in perspective on biomimetic tissue adhesives published in Nature Medicine
News: Mussel inspired adhesives for fetal membrane repair reported by PBS Newshour
News: Fetal-membrane glue and negative swelling gels featured on ScienceNow
News: Dr. Messersmith will receive the 2013 Clemson Award for Basic Research from the Society for Biomaterials at its annual meeting in April

Messersmith Research Group