Functional Glycopolypeptides: Synthesis and Biomedical Applications

Zhao Wang,Santanu Bhattachaya,Guosong Chen,Qing Lin,Ruilong Sheng,Jingjing Sun,Xiaojuan Zhang

doi:10.1155/2020/6052078

Abstract

Employing natural-based renewable sugar and saccharide resources to construct functional biopolymer mimics is a promising research frontier for green chemistry and sustainable biotechnology. As the mimics/analogues of natural glycoproteins, synthetic glycopolypeptides attracted great attention in the field of biomaterials and nanobiotechnology. This review describes the synthetic strategies and methods of glycopolypeptides and their analogues, the functional self-assemblies of the synthesized glycopolypeptides, and their biological applications such as biomolecular recognition, drug/gene delivery, and cell adhesion and targeting, as well as cell culture and tissue engineering. Future outlook of the synthetic glycopolypeptides was also discussed.

Highlights

Carbohydrates play a critical role in a large number of biological processes like metabolism, signal transduction, adhesion, and recognition
We summarize the state of the art in the design and synthesis of glycopolypeptide and their analogues via three different synthetic strategies, their biomimetic selfassembly behavior and lectin recognition character, and their biomedical applications as drug/gene delivery vehicles, tissue engineering scaffolds, antimicrobial agents, etc
It was found that a higher content of glucosamine leads to faster ConA lectin binding [85]. They newly synthesized a series of glycopolypeptides with identical overall composition and systematically varied sequences and found that the binding efficiency with lectin was dependent on the position of the galactose units and the primary glycopolypeptide structure

Summary

Introduction

Carbohydrates play a critical role in a large number of biological processes like metabolism, signal transduction, adhesion, and recognition. Glycopolymers, as synthetic polymeric compounds containing pendant glycosides [2], have attracted growing attention and demonstrated wide applications as powerful tools for carbohydrate-lectin interaction research, as well as acting as scaffolds for tissue engineering and drug carriers [3,4,5]. They are usually produced by controlled radical polymerization (e.g., Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer Polymerization (RAFT) or Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP)) of vinyl monomers and ring-opening metathesis polymerization of norbornenes [6,7,8]. We briefly look at the future development of the synthetic glycopolypeptides

Synthesis of Glycopolypeptides

Catalyst S

Biomimetic SelfAssembly of Glycopolypeptides

H N xO H y

Biological Applications of Synthetic Glycopolypeptides

Summary and Outlook