Novel AIEgen-Functionalized Diselenide-Crosslinked Polymer Gels as Fluorescent Probes and Drug Release Carriers.

Jie Zhao,Xiangqiang Pan,Xiulin Zhu,Jian Zhu

doi:10.3390/polym12030551

Jie Zhao, Xiangqiang Pan + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/polym12030551

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Journal: Polymers	Publication Date: Mar 3, 2020
Citations: 20	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Soochow University, Institute of Software

Abstract

Stimuli-responsive functional gels have shown significant potential for application in biosensing and drug release systems. In this study, aggregation-induced emission luminogen (AIEgen)-functionalized, diselenide-crosslinked polymer gels were synthesized via free radical copolymerization. A series of polymer gels with different crosslink densities or tetraphenylethylene (TPE) contents were synthesized. The diselenide crosslinker in the gels could be fragmented in the presence of H2O2 or dithiothreitol (DTT) due to its redox-responsive property. Thus, the TPE-containing polymer chains were released into the aqueous solution. As a result, the aqueous solution exhibited enhanced fluorescence emission due to the strong hydrophobicity of TPE. The degradation of polymer gels and fluorescence enhancement in an aqueous solution under different H2O2 or DTT concentrations were studied. Furthermore, the polymer gels could be used as drug carriers, suggesting a visual drug release process under the action of external redox agents. The AIEgen-functionalized, diselenide-crosslinked polymer gels hold great potential in the biomedical area for biosensing and controlled drug delivery.

Highlights

Stimuli-responsive materials can undergo relatively large and abrupt physical or chemical changes in response to small external stimuli [1,2]
Fluorescent probes based on the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) effect have attracted great attention [18,19,20,21], especially tetraphenylethylene (TPE) has been extensively studied for its high quantum yield and facile synthesis
The synthetic route is shown in Scheme 1

Summary

Introduction

Stimuli-responsive materials can undergo relatively large and abrupt physical or chemical changes in response to small external stimuli [1,2]. In the last few decades, stimuli-responsive functional gels, responsive to light, temperature, pH, ionic strength, force, and redox reactions, among others, have attracted significant attention in sensing, drug delivery, and biotechnology [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Among these functionalities, redox-responsive polymer gels play an important role for application in physiological environments, where the redox process is constantly and widely present [12,13,14].

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