(131c) Controlled Polymer Assemblies to Promote Drug Delivery and Cellular Genome Editing

Polymeric materials and their assemblies have made a tremendous impact on a multitude of biomedical applications. For example, nucleic acid delivery vehicles have promise to promote cell and gene therapies via selective genome editing. Also, the development of polymer excipients can improve the solubility and bioavailability of small molecule drugs. To accommodate such diverse function, the chemistry and engineering parameters should be readily tunable for activity in each specific application while remaining biologically benign. Indeed, the properties of polymers containing functional monomers can be tuned based on chemistry, sequence, composition, and molecular weight to yield diverse function and properties while remaining biologically benign. Here, the synthetic design and characterization of tailored block and statistical polymers that contain hydrophilic, cationic, and hydrophobic domains will be presented that serve as attractive shape and size-regulated vehicles for the delivery of drugs, DNA, RNA, and Cas9 protein. Specific arrangement and length of the blocks offer tuning of self-assembled morphologies such as micelles and core-shell complexes that control the solution and biological properties and efficacy. Complexation of these structures with biomolecules in a hierarchical manner has been studied in detail. The application in the improvement of drug bioavailability and as novel vehicles for genome editing applications will be presented.