Polymer conjugation to biologics such as proteins and cell surfaces have a bevy of potential applications ranging from therapeutics to biocatalytic materials. While conjugates consisting of polyethylene glycol have been widely studied, only recently have polymers synthesized via living polymerization techniques been incorporated at the biological interface. Our contribution to this growing field has been the utilization of ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) for the synthesis of novel polynorbornene protein conjugates. ROMP is an attractive living polymerization technique due to its high functional group tolerance and its amenability to ambient conditions, particularly desirable qualities for ‘graft-from’ polymerization methodologies in the complex biological milieu. Herein is described the first examples of polynorbornene cell conjugates. These have been synthesized via both ‘graft-from’ and ‘graft-to’ methodologies using non-covalent cell membrane insertion to anchor the polymer to the cell surface. Cell polymer conjugates with different polymer backbone structure, molecular weight, functional groups as well as block copolymer topology have been explored and will be discussed.

Conjugation of polynorbornene to cell surfaces

2019 Fall National Meeting

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