Session: Nucleic Acids, Carbohydrates and Peptides:

Zwitterionic polymers have shown promise as functional biomaterial platforms with resistance to nonspecific protein adsorption (non-biofouling) and as controlled release drug delivery hydrogels. A major challenge for developing these polymer-based biomaterials is the limited number of approaches for delivering the combinatorial biochemical and mechanical factors that regulate the biological response as well as nonspecific biological interactions to provide a tunable polymer platform zwitterionic cross-linker 1 has been synthesized from commercially available serine amino acids. Strategic design for 1 consisted of a convergent coupling of methacrylated L-Serine coupling partners followed by careful global deprotection to yield the zwitterionic cross-linker in good overall yields. A similar synthetic strategy has been implemented to synthesis lysine based methacrylated crosslinkers following the hypothesis that molecular-level control over the length, charge spacing, charge density, and side-chain will lead to fully tunable polymer hydrogels for improved biomaterials. These cross-linkers will be incorporated into polyampholyte hydrogels and tested for their material properties.

Matthew Bernards

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