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Jim and Bob -- Bob Waymouth from Stanford; Jim Hedrick from Almaden --
have been working together for something like 10 years on very fundamental research related
to new catalysts for polymer chemistry.
They recently received for this monumental achievement
in catalyst development the President's Medal given by the E.P.A.
in Washington, D.C., for green chemistry.
And these catalysts that they've developed, they're mostly useful
for creating new materials, new polymers.
And these new polymers have very special structures,
and it turns out that these special polymer structures that they can make
with these catalysts are biocompatible.
So, many of the polymers Jim makes have what we call linkages in the polymer background
that you can envision enzymes going in and breaking them down like little pairs
of scissors -- envision the enzymes in the body as a little pair of scissors.
And we can control the structure of the polymer
such that the breakdown products are extraordinarily safe.
Some of these catalysts have very high activity -- we call them the molecular sorter, taking PET
and breaking it down to a starting material.
Now, the reason why we call it a molecular sorter is we have investigated the impact
of foreign matter -- dirt, water, soda, residue, foreign polymers like these bottlecaps,
labels -- what's the impact on the rate of chemical decomposition of this super plastic?
And what we find is it's negligible, and so the molecular sorter catalysts swim
around in the mix and find only the PET.
The prospect of creating really interesting new polymers that are safe for use
in the human body is there, but that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg
of the application space for these polymers.
We have many applications actually beyond medicine for these materials,
but maybe some of the most spectacular applications are...longer term are
for human health.
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