Research Interests

The Maikawa Lab is an interdisciplinary team that brings together scientists with expertise in biology, material science, chemistry, and medicine to engineer dynamic polymer materials to solve drug delivery and biomedical challenges. Polymer materials are powerful tools to modulate the delivery of therapeutics. Our team works on developing dynamic polymer systems that interface with our body’s biology in order to improve biopharmaceutical delivery. We apply our biointerfacing polymer materials to enhance precision medicine with the goal of increasing treatment efficacy and improving patient outcomes. We use our materials to address key challenges in biopharmaceutical delivery: targeting therapeutics to the disease site, timing the release of therapeutics, and monitoring local biomarkers to monitor or adjust treatments. The technologies that we develop in the Maikawa Lab can be applied to develop therapeutics and monitoring systems for many diseases including diabetes, digestive diseases and autoimmune diseases.