Controlled polymerisation of water-soluble monomers towards the fabrication of soft cellular scaffolds Maria Chiara Arno, Alasdair Rigby, Amaziah Alipio, Viviane Chiaradia University of Birmingham, UK Controlled radical polymerisation techniques, including reversible-addition fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT), have transformed the field of polymer chemistry in the last few decades, affording the production of polymers with precise control over molecular weights, dispersities, and architectures. 1 More recently, Boyer and co- workers reported a robust and highly efficient photo-induced living polymerization, which was set to change the radical polymerisation landscape. 2 In their work, a photoredox catalyst was employed to generate an excited species under irradiation, which was then able to reduce thiocarbonylthio compounds (RAFT agents) via photoinduced electron transfer (PET), initiating polymerization of monomers. This technique presents several merits in comparison to the conventional RAFT mechanism: the polymerization reactions can be performed at room temperature, in the presence of air, using low energy blue light in tandem with catalyst doses in the ppm range. Following this successful discovery, Hawker and co-workers reported the use of PET-RAFT to polymerise monomers directly at the cell surface, decorating the cell membrane with a poly(ethylene glycol) analogue. 3 More recently, Bradley and co-workers described the first ever attempt of polymerisation inside living cells using N-(2-hydroxypropyl) methacrylamide (HPMA) and sodium 4-styrenesulfonate (NaSS) as monomers. 4 Inspired by these exciting advances, we aim to design new cytocompatible materials using water-soluble precursors that can be polymerised through RAFT and PET-RAFT methodologies. The new materials would also be capable of undergoing post-polymerisation modifications directly in water and can be used as cell scaffolds for applications in the tissue engineering remit. References 1. S. Perrier. Macromolecules 2017, 50, 7433-7447 2. J. Xu, K. Jung, A. Atme, S. Shanmugam, C. Boyer. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 5508-5519. 3. J. Niu, D. J. Lunn, A. Pusuluri, J. I. Yoo, M. A. O’Malley, S. Mitragotri, H. T. Soh, C. J. Hawker. Nat. Chem. 2017, 9, 537-545. 4. J. Geng, W. Li, Y. Zhang, N. Thottappillil, J. Clavadetscher, A. Lilienkampf, M. Bradley. Nat. Chem. 2019, 11, 578-586.
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