Polymer vesicles, or polymersomes, have drawn much attention as  versatile nanocontainers for application in the biomedical field. For targeted drug delivery or the induction of cell uptake, polymersomes need to be functionalized with the appropriate biomolecular ligands. The coupling chemistry employed should thereby not interfere with the biological activity of the moieties attached. In this paper we present different modification strategies which allow us to decorate in a highly controlled manner polymersomes with bioactive compounds. The different approaches that will be discussed are copper-free click chemistries based on strained cyclooctynes, intein-mediated ligation for dual functionalization and hydrazone-based coupling which makes reversible labeling possible. The functionalised polymersomes were subsequently tested in two different biomedical applications, namely tumor tissue recognition and transport over the blood-brain barrier.

Reversible and orthogonal aproaches to biofunctionalize polymersomes

244th National Meeting (2012)

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