Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) is a synthetic polymer used in a wide variety of consumer, pharmaceutical and , research, and medical contextsproducts, so there is much interest in tracking its release, stability, and conjugation. However, existing assays for PEG detection (such as anti-PEG ELISA, high performance liquid chromatography, or radiolabeling) are typically technically demanding and costly. Previous studies [KSA1] demonstrated that linear PEG within a narrow range of molecular weights could can be detected colorimetrically using inexpensive reagents. In this work, a high-throughput liquid handling system was used to determine the optimaloptimized an experimental protocol to maximize the precision and accuracy of this colorimetric measurement, allowing for reliable quantification of PEG at concentrations between 0.1-70 micrograms per millilitermg/mL. This strategy can also be easily extended to the detection of PEGs across a wide range of geometries structures and molecular weights, as well as similar polyether polymers and block copolymers containing polyether repeats. As a demonstration, PEG hydrogels crosslinked with labile motifs may bewere degraded in a controlled manner using a variety of stimuli; consequently,, and this approach wasis used to explore differences in hydrogel mass loss depending on network connectivity and crosslinking chemistry. Given that these systems are often designed to be employed for controlled release of pharmaceuticals or as transient scaffolds for tissue engineering, precise degradation profiles are of great interest. By degrading a hydrogel and measuring the concentration of PEG in the supernatant, these mass loss profiles can bewere measured at any pointmultiple points during hydrogel degradation and with greater precision than other common alternative, common methods.

Colorimetric quantification of PEG hydrogel mass loss

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