Abstract
Synthetic Polymer Nanoparticles. Abiotic Receptors for
Peptides, Proteins and Carbohydrates.
Kenneth J. Shea
Department of Chemistry
University of California, Irvine, CA, 92617
Just as medicinal chemists routinely design and synthesize small
molecules to target the active site of a single protein in the
proteome, we suggest that advances in polymer synthesis and
nanotechnology have progressed to the point where we can begin to
design synthetic polymer nanoparticles (NPs) with antibody-like
affinity and selectivity for targeted biomacromolecules. The talk
will describe abiotic protein/peptide and carbohydrate affinity
agents. These agents, synthetic polymer NP hydrogels, are
formulated with functional groups complementary to the
biomacromolecule target. We use an iterative process to improve
binding affinity by optimizing the composition and proportion of
functional monomers. An epitope, a unique fragment of the target
protein, can be included in the final polymerization step to
enhance NP affinity/selectivity. Unique to these materials is
that their affinity can be “turned off” simply by lowering the
solution temperature, a strategy we have exploited in protein
purification via “catch and release”.
The talk will be concerned with an exploration of new targets and
applications for abiotic polymer nanoparticles. In addition we
will describe biological and bioanalytical techniques to
characterize NP-biomacromolecule binding to develop insight into
the fundamentals of binding affinity.