The number of polymer-based vectors for siRNA delivery in clinical trials lags behind other delivery strategies; however, the molecular architectures and chemical compositions available to polymers make them attractive candidates for further exploration. Polymer vectors are extensively investigated in academic laboratories worldwide with fundamental progress having recently been made in the areas of highthroughput screening, synthetic methods, cellular internalization, endosomal escape and computational prediction and analysis. This review assesses recent advances within the field and highlights relevant developments from within the complementary fields of nanotechnology and protein chemistry with the intent to propose future work that addresses key gaps within the current body of knowledge, potentially advancing the development of the next generation of polymeric vectors.

The scalable synthesis of the first example of poly(methacrylamide) class homopolymer with a spacer linked 1H-imidazol-1-yl pendants via free radical polymerization in DMSO which served as a polymerization solvent and gel permeation chromatography eluent has been reported. The synthesized polymeric construct demonstrated noticeably robust binding to DNA, thus establishing a basis for this polymer to be further tested for biological utilization such as in-vivo nucleic-acid delivery or ex-vivo sample purification.