(235a) Degradable Drug Delivery Nanoparticles Assembled From Zwitterionic “Sharp” Contrast Amphiphilic Polymers

We have demonstrated a class of ?stealth? zwitterionic materials that are highly resistant to nonspecific protein adsorption, bacterial adhesion, and biofilm formation. Among zwitterionic materials, only poly(carboxybetaine) (PCB) can be functionalized with biomolecules. This makes it a possible alternative to polyethylene glycol (PEG), which is vulnerable to oxidative damage and has few functional groups, for a broad range of applications. However, it is very difficult to combine the robust PCB to any hydrophobic domains due to its super-hydrophilic property. This talk introduces a generic method to covalently attach super-hydrophilic PCB to hydrophobic moieties by adopting the hydrolysable hydrophobic precursor of zwitterionic PCB. Based on this method, amphiphilic block copolymers with ?sharp? hydrophobic/hydrophilic contrast between two moieties were obtained. This talk focuses on the formulation of ?sharp? contrast polymers into degradable drug delivery systems (i.e. poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) based systems). Unusual properties of the resulting drug delivery nanoparticles (NPs) will be discussed that are not found in any of current NP systems.