Synthetic Protein Mimics: Advances in Architectures and Applications
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymeric Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2023) | Viewed by 3455
Special Issue Editors
Interests: living/controlled polymerization methodologies; catalysis and rare earth metal catalysts; synthesis of polymers with complex topologies; design and application of functional polymeric materials; Monte Carlo simulation in polymer science; quantum chemical calculation and molecular modeling
Interests: living/controlled polymerization methodologies; functional poly(amino acid)s; photo-responsive polymers; polymer self-assembly; polymeric biomaterials; hydrogels
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As synthetic mimics of natural proteins, poly(α-amino acid)s (also known as polypeptides), poly(N-substituted-α-amino acid)s (also known as polypeptoids), poly(β-amino acid)s, polyoxazolines, polyoxazine, etc., are attractive biomaterials with excellent biocompatibility and degradability due to their similar structures to proteins. Their synthetic methods have been continuously developed in recent years. Thanks to the development of characterization and excellent experimental works, some old mechanism questions also see the dawn of lights. The synthetic methods mainly include biosynthesis, solid-phase synthesis, ring-opening polymerizations (ROPs) of various monomers. Taking polypeptides and polypeptoids as examples, the ROPs of N-carboxyanhydride and N-thiocarboxyanhydride have the advantages of simple operation, low cost, living/controlled characteristics and high molecular weight of products, which have brought great opportunities for the applications of protein mimicking materials.
Chiral centers and multiple hydrogen bond interactions along the backbones allow the peptide-containing polymers to form secondary structures, such as α-helix and β-sheet, for constructing precisely ordered biofunctional nanomaterials. Their properties, including hydrophilicity, hydrophobicity, (bio)degradability and bioactivity, can be easily tuned by changing the architectures of backbones and functional side groups, as well as the copolymerization with other polymers. They have been extensively applied in the fields of drug delivery, nucleic acid and protein delivery, biomedicine, bioimaging, cell scaffolds, etc.
This Special Issue will compile recent developments in the field of synthesis, characterization and applications of various synthetic mimics of proteins. The articles presented in this Special Issue will cover various topics, ranging from but not limited to the novel synthetic methods of ROPs and polycondensations, solid-phase synthesis, functional side chain design, polymerization mechanism, macromolecular architecture, novel property study, self-assembly, hydrogels, surface modification and various biomedical applications. Topics are open to synthetic methods, macromolecular architectures and biomedical applications of such promising materials.
Prof. Dr. Jun Ling
Dr. Xinfeng Tao
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- biomaterials
- biomedical applications
- secondary structure
- self-assembly
- poly(amino acid)s
- polypeptides
- polypeptoids
- polyoxazonlines
- polyoxazines
