Publié le 06/02/2020 par Chan-Seng Delphine
Thermoresponsive polymers with a lower or upper critical solution
temperature (LCST and UCST respectively) are attractive smart materials
in the field of biomedicine. The UCST behavior, i.e. reversible
increased solubility upon increased temperature, is usually induced by
hydrogen bonding or Coulomb interactions. Thus, this phenomenon is not
expected for polyelectrolytes without specific counterion in water. In
the context of the NANOTRANSMED project, the PECMAT and CMP teams in
collaboration with the laboratory Biomaterials and Bioengineering
(INSERM UMR_S 1121) and the laboratory of Modelisation and Molecular
Simulation (CNRS UMR 7140) recently reported the synthesis and
characterization of a cationic comb polymers with pentaarginine side
chains exhibiting an UCST behavior (doi:
10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2020.109528). This phenomenon was attributed and
supported by molecular dynamic simulations to the stacking of the
guanidinium groups of the arginine residues at low temperature.