Presentation day

Tuesday  11:40 AM

 

TITLE

Self-assembled glycopolypeptide copolymer nanoparticles: bioactivity and multivalency

 

Abstract

The field of synthetic polypeptides has seen many significant advances in recent years,
including studies on block and hybrid copolypeptides that form vesicles, fibrils, and other structures with
potential applications in medicine and materials chemistry. However, the development of glycosylated
polypeptides has not kept pace, primarily due to the inability to readily synthesize glycopolypeptides in a
controlled manner. Glycosylation of natural proteins provides diverse functionality such as mediation of
recognition events, modification of protein conformations, ect, that may find interest and application in
biomedical field. In this context, we developed over the last years synthetic strategies for the design of
glycosylated polypeptides and polysaccharide-polypeptide biohybrids with controlled placement of sugar
functionality. We were especially interested in designing amphiphilic copolymers able to self-assemble into
well-defined micelles and vesicles that can advantageously be loaded with drugs and present a surface
with multivalent presentation of bioactive saccharides or oligosaccharides. The ability of these
nanoparticles for different biomedical applications, from drug-delivery to inhibitor, will be presented.