About hundred years ago, Hermann Staudinger published his “Macromolecular Manifesto” and demonstrated the existence of macromolecules. Today, polymer chemistry still provides a rich research area with many synthetic challenges that still need to be solved to create materials with entirely novel functions. In comparison to natural biopolymers such as proteins, peptides, carbohydrates, or DNA that represent the central framework of all biological processes in Nature, synthetic polymers usually lack precisely defined backbones, distinct monomer sequences of natural diversity that program shapes, 3D architectures and supramolecular assemblies, which is a prerequisite for achieving rich activities of biopolymers. Taking inspiration from Nature, novel synthetic procedures allow preparing polymeric architectures with structural complexity and precision. Such macromolecules resemble natural biopolymers in many aspects and they provide new opportunities for generating efficient and biocompatible polymer biotherapeutics.<br/>Our approaches to solving such challenges will be presented first focusing on the synthesis of precision polymeric architectures based on body’s own biomaterials as templates and scaffolds. The synergistic combination of polymer chemistry and protein or DNA research provides hybrid macromolecules of high structure definition that interact with proteins, viruses and cells in a controlled fashion thereby modulating vital cellular processes.

Biotemplated polymer synthesis: Controlling polymer structures for biomedical applications

2019 Spring National Meeting

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