897: OPTIMIZATION OF THE TAI STRATEGY FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF WATER-SOLUBLE POLYMERS FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

OPTIMIZATION OF THE TAI STRATEGY FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF WATER-SOLUBLE POLYMERS FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

Tania Chopra, Eliška Müllerová, Sachin Gupta, and Vladimír Raus

Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, Heyrovského nám. 2,

162 00, Prague 6, Czech Republic; tania@imc.cas.cz, raus@imc.cas.cz

Recently, a new synthetic strategy utilizing the copper-catalyzed reversible-deactivation radical polymerization (Cu-RDRP) initiated by the adducts of trichloroacetyl isocyanate (TAI) was introducted.¹ This strategy enables the synthesis of unique complex polymeric architectures (e.g. graft copolymers, stars) with unprecedently high chain density. So far, however, the strategy has been applied only to non-polar monomers. Within our current efforts aimed at the preparation of hydrophilic biocompatible polymer-based carriers for biomedical applications, we investigated the applicability of the TAI strategy to the polymerization of water-soluble monomers. In this contribution, the optimization of Cu-RDRP conditions to achieve well-defined polymers will be demonstrated for N-(2-hydroxypropyl) methacrylamide (HPMA) and poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (PEGMA). Different polymerization parameters, such as temperature, solvent, catalyst and ligand type, or catalytic system stoichiometry, have been varied to attain branched low-dispersity polymers at high monomer conversions. The developed conditions were then applied to synthesize different complex polymeric architectures, e.g., multi-arm polymeric stars based on a β-cyclodextrin core, that will be used for subsequent end-group modification. The synthesized branched polymers were characterized by ¹H NMR spectroscopy and size-exclusion chromatography with a triple-detection system.

Reference:
1) Gupta S., Janata M., Čadová E., Raus V; Straightforward synthesis of complex polymeric architectures with ultra-high chain density. Chem. Sci. 2024, 15, 12739-12753. DOI: 10.1039/d4sc01739k

Acknowledgment: The financial support from the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic (project no. NW24-03-00387) is acknowledged.