Polymers for Control Freaks: Sequence-Defined Poly(amidoamine)s and Their Biomedical Applications

A novel synthetic strategy towards monodisperse, sequence-defined polymers is presented. This technique was applied for the synthesis of a set of polymer carriers for DNA delivery combining monodisperse, sequence-defined PAA segments with PEO blocks. These precision polymers are sequentially assembled from a library of building blocks, enabling programmed interactions and functions by sequence-specific positioning of different functionalities. Due to the absence of chemical and molecular-weight distributions in the multifunctional segments, exact correlation of the monomer sequence and (bio) properties is attainable. This is demonstrated by the interactions with plasmid DNA, investigating the dsDNA complexation and condensation properties in dependence of the monomer sequence.