Self‐Assembly of Hyperbranched Polymers and Its Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Hyperbranched polymers (HBPs) are highly branched macromolecules with a three-dimensional dendritic architecture. Due to their unique topological structure and interesting physical/chemical properties, HBPs have attracted wide attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, the recent developments in HBP self-assembly and their biomedical applications have been comprehensively reviewed. Many delicate supramolecular structures from zero-dimension (0D) to three-dimension (3D), such as micelles, fibers, tubes, vesicles, membranes, large compound vesicles and physical gels, have been prepared through the solution or interfacial self-assembly of amphiphilic HBPs. In addition, these supramolecular structures have shown promising applications in the biomedical areas including drug delivery, protein purification/detection/delivery, gene transfection, antibacterial/antifouling materials and cytomimetic chemistry. Such developments promote the interdiscipline researches among surpramolecular chemistry, biomedical chemistry, nano-technology and functional materials.

Polyester-Based, Biodegradable Core-Multishell Nanocarriers for the Transport of Hydrophobic Drugs

“…As previous trials with grafting to approaches led to low functionalization of the hyperbranched template, and removal of unreacted amphiphilic double-shell building blocks turned out to be quite tedious, we decided to use the grafting-from approach. As already discussed in other publications, multiple hydroxyl groups on one branched scaffold allow the polymerization to simultaneously take place at ideally all accessible hydroxyl groups [23,24]. This concept of a so-called macroinitiator was used in our herein-presented work to polymerize ε-caprolactone in a tin-catalyzed ring opening polymerization.…”

Solubilization of phenols by multimolecular aggregates formed by low molecular weight hyperbranched polyglycidol

“…This is an unexpected and interesting result as it is in contrast to the view of HBP as unimolecular entities. The number of morphologies and structures of assemble HBPs and their unique properties have converted them in promising systems for biomedical applications [15][16][17]. Self-assembling HBPs are formed by hydrophobic (hydrophilic) dendritic core and hydrophilic (hydrophobic) arms.…”

Hyperbranched aliphatic polyether polyols

“…General strategies for the synthesis of MSPs have been covered in several excellent reviews. 18,[151][152][153] The potential applications of the hyperbranched aliphatic polyethers and their corresponding MSPs, for example, as unimolecular containers, for molecular self-assembly and biomedical purposes have been covered in other reviews [154][155][156] and will be discussed with a special focus on hyperbranched aliphatic polyethers in different sections of this highlight article.…”

“…Yan and coworkers extensively studied MSPs based on PEHO with a certain focus on self-assembly and biomedical applications. 155 Especially, PEHOs with PEG arms show unique self-assembly behavior up to the formation of macroscopic visible fibers in acetone (see section ''Solution Properties''). 107,108,178 In ongoing studies, it was found that the DB of PEHO has a significant effect on the aggregation behavior, as the MSPs can self-assemble into vesicles, wormlike micelles, and spherical micelles with a decrease in DB of the hyperbranched core, respectively.…”