Abstract
Photoresponsive polymers have attracted increasing interest for a variety of applications. Here, we report a family of photoresponsive polypeptoid-based copolymer poly(ethylene glycol)-b-poly(N-(S-(o-nitrobenzyl)-thioethyl) glycine)-co-poly(N-(2-phenylethyl) glycine) (PEG-b-PNSN-co-PNPE) synthesized by the controlled ring-opening polymerization (ROP) technique. The key feature of the design is to incorporate both o-nitrobenzyl group moiety to offer the photoresponsive property and phenethyl residues to tune the structural and amphiphilic property of the system. We demonstrate that the cleavage degree of the o-nitrobenzyl group can reach to 100% upon UV-irradiation. With delicate design, a photoresponsive vesicle-to-sphere transition has been observed that facilitates the release of the encapsulants. This work provides a facile approach to prepare a type of photoresponsive polymers with tunable properties for drug delivery.
Highlights
Self-assemblies prepared from natural polymers and bioinspired synthetic polymers have been largely used for pharmaceutical applications due to their excellent biocompatibility and non-immunogenicity [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
We further investigated the photoresponsive properties of PEG-b-PNSN-co-PNPE assemblies in aqueous
This is very different from the results hydrophobicity the copolymer decreases significantly, which enables the vesicle-to sphere of PEG-b-PNSN in a previous report, where the morphology is stabilized by the disulfide bonds [28]
Summary
Self-assemblies prepared from natural polymers and bioinspired synthetic polymers have been largely used for pharmaceutical applications due to their excellent biocompatibility and non-immunogenicity [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The properties of the polypeptoids are mainly determined by the side chain moiety because of the absence of hydrogen bonding and chirality in the backbone [20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. Both structural and property’s tunablity enables the polypeptoid–based system highly designable. The self-assembled morphology transforms from a few hundred nanometers of vesicles to tens of nanometers of nanospheres This transition further results in the release of the small molecule in a controlled manner. The synthesis, self-assembly and phototriggered drug release have been thoroughly investigated
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