2026 CBE Research Day Booklet

Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Research Day Symposium Schedule

“Bottlebrush Block Copolymer Prevents Disease Onset in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy”

Frank S. Bates
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

Abstract

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a rare genetic disorder that appears in about 3,600 newborn boys in the US annually. This progressive degenerative muscle disease leads to disability and death as the afflicted individual matures to adult age. My colleagues and I have discovered that a bottlebrush (BB) version of poly(ethylene oxide-b-propylene oxide) block copolymer, a variation on commercial compounds known as Poloxamers, has a remarkable effect on genetically modified DMD mice. These results will be discussed in the context of recent studies dealing with the interaction of Poloxamer triblock copolymers with model lipid bilayers and comparison with the new BB diblock compound.

Speaker Bio

Frank S. Bates is a Regents Professor and a member of the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science department at the University of Minnesota. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from SUNY Albany and M.S. and Sc.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. Between 1982 and 1989, Bates was a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories then joined the University of Minnesota where he served as department Head from 1999 to 2014. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors.

Bates conducts research on a range of topics related to polymers, including the thermodynamics, dynamics, structure, and properties of block polymers, polymer blends and solutions. He has published more than 560 articles in leading peer reviewed journals and lectured worldwide at Universities, international scientific and engineering conferences, and at numerous companies. His research has resulted in several commercial products and he co-founded two startup companies with colleagues from the University of Minnesota: Valerian Materials in 2015 pursuing sustainable plastics, and Elymus in 2025, which deals with bottlebrush poloxamers. He has mentored more than 100 PhD students and over 50 post-doctoral fellows during his career and these alumni have prospered as leaders in industry, academia and national laboratories. Bates has been recognized for his scholarly accomplishments by the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Materials Research Society.