Polysaccharides represent an interesting class of natural polymers and have a remarkable versatility as multifunctional materials for therapeutic applications. They come in many different sizes, can be easily modified with the toolkit of bioorganic chemistry and are particularly attractive because of their degradability and biocompatibility.<br/><br/>In this work, we present a click-chemistry approach to link two dextran macromolecules resulting in an amphiphilic block copolymer. We discuss the challenges of efficient chain-end modification and the application of copper-mediated azide-alkyne click chemistry. The resulting modified biopolymer can self-assemble into sub 100 nm-sized micellar structures and can stabilize hydrophobic drugs. Due to the pH-sensitivity of one of the blocks, the nanoparticles can rapidly disintegrate under mildly acidic conditions including those found in sites of inflammation, tumor tissue, or endocytic vesicles. Upon hydrolytic degradation, the material reverts to its natural polysaccharide structure without the generation of acidic by-products that could damage the encapsulated payload or lead to inflammation, as has been observed with some other commonly used polymer systems.<br/><br/>Since both the material and the nanostructures show low toxicity and high biodegradability, we envision the material an ideal platform for a wide range of therapeutic applications including immunotherapy and targeted drug delivery.

Amphiphilic polysaccharide block copolymers for nanoparticulate drug delivery

254th National Meeting (2017)

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