Re: A New Polymer Product from Soy Oil

**C* B* <c*@twcny.rr.com>**

And today from the ARS.
Carol Bradford

> STORY LEAD:
> A New Polymer Product from Soy Oil, Not Petroleum
> ___________________________________________
>
> ARS News Service
> Agricultural Research Service, USDA
> Jan Suszkiw, (301) 504-1630, jan.suszkiw@ars.usda.gov
> May 2, 2008
> --View this report online, plus photos and related stories, at www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr
> ___________________________________________
>
> Hair-care products, wound-care dressings and drug encapsulation are  
> among the potential uses of new, soy-oil-based polymers known as  
> "hydrogels," developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS)  
> scientists in Peoria, Ill.
>
> ARS chemists Sevim Erhan and Zengshe Liu developed the soy-oil-based  
> hydrogels as a biodegradable alternative to the synthetic polymers  
> now used, including polyacrylic acid and polyacrylamide.
>
> Soy oil is an appealing raw material to use because it is chemically  
> versatile, abundant and renewable--meaning the crop can be replanted  
> each year to renew the supply. In 2006, U.S. farmers planted 76  
> million acres of soybeans, equal to about 38 percent of the world's  
> total oilseed production, notes Erhan. She and Liu both work at ARS'  
> National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria.
>
> They first began investigating soy-oil-based hydrogels in 1999 as  
> part of the Peoria center's mission of exploring new, value-added  
> uses for corn, soybeans and other Midwest crops. Using a two-step  
> process--ring-opening polymerization and hydrolysis--they created a  
> squishy but durable hydrogel polymer that expands and contracts in  
> response to changes in temperature and acidity levels.
>
> In tests, they observed that the hydrogel's water-absorbing capacity  
> was lower than that of petroleum-based polymers. But this later  
> proved to be a plus. In collaboration with Erhan and Liu, a  
> University of Toronto scientist successfully formulated the hydrogel  
> into nanoparticles that encapsulate the breast cancer drug  
> doxorubicin. In drug-release experiments, nanoparticle-delivered  
> doxorubicin proved eight times more toxic to cancerous cell lines  
> than when lipid-water solutions were used.
>
> Soy proteins are known allergens, but Erhan doesn't anticipate this  
> posing a problem to the nanoparticles' use as drug-delivery agents.  
> That's because soy oil's chemical structure is completely changed by  
> the two-step manufacturing process used to make the hydrogel.
>
> Read more about the research in the May/June 2008 issue of  
> Agricultural Research magazine, available online at:http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/may08/hydrogel0508.htm 
> .
>
> ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific  
> research agency.
>
> ___________________________________________
_______________________________________________
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