GlycoPol™ molecules with chain lengths of up to 100 carbohydrate units and with molecular weights of up to ca.50 kDa can be synthesised with various arrays of sugars, such as monosaccharides, di-saccharides or polysaccharides, or mixtures of these, on their surface. The ability to vary the backbone length and sugar composition allows a vast range of GlycoPols™ to be synthesise.
Firstly, Living Radical Polymerisation is used to form a poly(methacrylate) backbone. Secondly, the desired sugar molecules are “clicked” on to the backbone to give the desired glycopolymer.
A large variety of carbohydrate-based materials can be obtained starting from the same alkyne containing “clickable” polymer. This allows libraries of sugar polymers featuring materials with identical size polymer backbones, but differing only in the nature of the pendant sugar moieties, to be readily prepared.
Each glycopolymer has a single reactive conjugating end group for site-specific covalent attachment to biomolecules. Depending on the conjugation chemistry chosen, glycopolymers can be attached via cysteine or lysine residues or to the N-terminus of a protein, peptide or oligonucleotide. Both established and novel chemical techniques can be used.
