Polypeptide–polymer bioconjugates

Abstract

Creating bioconjugates by combining polymers with peptides and proteins is an emerging multidisciplinary field of research that has enjoyed increased attention within the scientific community. This critical review provides an overview of the strategies employed for the construction of these materials and will highlight the underlying synthetic methods used. This review is therefore relevant for chemists, material scientists and chemical biologists facing the challenge of constructing polypeptide-polymer bioconjugates in a controlled fashion (269 references).

Bioorthogonal metal-free click-ligation of cRGD-pentapeptide to alginate

“…1 In this context, the preparation of peptide-polymer bioconjugates is a very important issue that can be realised by "grafting onto" or by "grafting from" approaches. 2 The most popular "grafting to" technique is the copper-mediated Huisgentype 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition, first reported by Meldal and Sharpless, respectively.…”

Noncovalent PEGylation via Lectin–Glycopolymer Interactions

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] PEGylation, the covalent attachment of polyethylene glycol, is a versatile means to increase a protein's size, stability and solubility. 2,[8][9][10][11] The increased radius of protein-PEG conjugates leads to a reduction in renal filtration, which together with decreased immunogenicity can result in longer circulation half lives compared to the native protein.…”

Engineering materials from proteins

“…The incorporation of noncanonical amino acids provides an extremely valuable technology for the synthesis of new protein materials, enabling new bioconjugation chemistries 9,21 and tuning of protein interactions. 22 While the chemistries used for solid-phase synthesis and NCA polymerization are amenable to the incorporation of many such noncanonical amino acids, their incorporation into proteins through biological synthesis is more challenging.…”

“…Even though the study of polymer science and protein science developed as intellectually separate disciplines, a growing community of researchers is designing materials at the interface of these two fields. A few examples are bioinspired polymers and synthetic enzymes that use traditional polymer materials to mimic the performance of proteins, 8 protein-polymer hybrids that incorporate both types of molecules into a single material, 9 and artificially engineered protein polymers that apply the design principles of polymer science to the engineering of new proteins. 10 This convergence of protein engineering and polymer science and the rapid progress at the interface of the two fields is indicative of a larger trend: several previously distinct fields of soft materials are being drawn together into an intellectually cohesive subject, unified by common considerations of time, length, and energy scales governing the underlying physics, a common set of building blocks for constructing molecules, and a common set of characterization tools.…”