Amino Acid and Peptide Based ‘Smart’ Hybrid Polymers: Rational Design, Synthetic Pathway and Bioapplications

Kumar, Sonu (2015) Amino Acid and Peptide Based ‘Smart’ Hybrid Polymers: Rational Design, Synthetic Pathway and Bioapplications. PhD thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

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Abstract

This thesis research focused on the synthetic development of amino acid or short peptide based side-chain polymers via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization method, a controlled free radical polymerization technique and to exploit the various characteristics associated with these hybrid polymers to find multi-applications. The effective strategies have been developed to prepare those biohybrid polymers in controlled fashion and the polymer conjugates can be tuned to achieve corresponding cationic polymers, as the field of side-chain amino acid/peptide based cationic polymers are relatively less explored. These cationic polymers are carrying primary amino groups (-NH2) in the pendant terminals and are relatively less cytotoxic as compared to poly(ethylenimine) due to the introduction of natural amino acid residues. Such cationic polymeric nanocarriers can be used in emerging biomedical technologies due to their enhanced cellular uptake and strong interaction with DNA to form polyplex. The –NH2 containing amino acid/peptide based polymers are found to display pH based stimuli-responsive phase transition behaviour from soluble to insoluble state in aqueous solution and thus are promising materials for bioapplications. The incorporation of appropriate peptides can generate such hybrid non-biological macromolecules with biomimetic structures and properties. The appearance of secondary conformations such as α-helices or β-sheets are achieved in such hybrid polymers, as there are very limited such reports available for their side-chain polymeric conjugates. The amino acid/peptide based amphiphilic block copolymers were further designed for their potential utility as nanocarrier for drug delivery system as well as vehicle for gene transfer application.

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