H. Wang, T. Peng, L. Yu, T. Wan, and S.-X. Cheng*
Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers of Ministry of China, Department of Chemistry,
Wuhan University, 430072, China
Keywords: biodegradable polymers, drug controlled release, amphiphilic
Amphiphilic biodegradable polymers are of special interest as biomaterials because of their unique physicochemical properties and the wide variety of applications in biomedical fields. In this study, we successfully synthesized a series of biodegradable amphiphilic graft polymers by grafting poly(2,2-dimethyltrimethylene carbonate) (PDTC) sequences onto poly-α,β-[N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-L-aspartamide] (PHEA) backbone (Figure 1). PDTC is a hydrophobic biodegradable polycarbonate1 and PHEA is a water-soluble, nontoxic, nonantigenic biodegradable polymer.2 In our investigation, by initiating the ring-opening polymerization of DTC by -OH groups in PHEA, amphiphilic graft polymers were obtained by one-step reaction conveniently. The brush-like structure of PHEA-g-PDTC can be adjusted by controlling the ratio of the monomer DTC to the macroinitiator PHEA as shown in Table 1. Because of the adjustable amphiphilicity and degradation rate of these polymers, they have promising applications in drug delivery (Figure 2).
[1] Matsuo J., et al., 1998. Macromolecules 31, 4432-4438.
[2] Giammona G., et al., 1987. J. Polym. Sci. Polym. Chem. 25, 2813-2818.
