Fatimah, .;
Gurnani, Pratik;
Williams, Gareth R;
(2024)
Investigating oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate thermoresponsive copolymers.
European Polymer Journal
, 216
, Article 113266. 10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2024.113266.
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Abstract
Methacrylate-based polymers are frequently used in the development of thermoresponsive smart materials for biomedical applications. Among all the routes to such polymers, reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) copolymerisation is one of the most widely used. This paper reports the synthesis of thermoresponsive copolymers comprising oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate with Mn of 300 (OEGMA₃₀₀) and di(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (DiEGMA). Polymers of molecular weight up to 100 kDA were obtained via RAFT polymerisation, mediated by a dithiobenzoate chain transfer agent (CTA) at 70 °C. An appropriate solvent, ratio of initiator to monomers, and minimum reaction polymerisation time were essential to provide optimum polymers. The synthesis of homogenous p(OEGMA₃₀₀-co-DIEGMA) polymers with PDI of 1.1–1.2 was achieved in toluene with ≥10 h of reaction. Increasing the molecular weight of the p(OEGMA₃₀₀-co-DiEGMA) polymers decreases the polydispersity index. p(OEGMA₃₀₀-co-DiEGMA) polymers with Mw of 50,000 Da were successfully synthesised with lower critical solution temperatures (LCSTs) of 41.3 °C, 43.0 °C and >45 °C for OEGMA₃₀₀:DiEGMA molar ratios of 2:8, 3:7 and 4:6, respectively. Further, the LCST was not found to be affected by the polymer molecular weight. The p(OEGMA₃₀₀-co-DiEGMA) polymers showed no cytotoxicity to Caco-2 cells at a concentration of 1 mg mL⁻¹, whereas a decrease of HDF cell viability by up to 26.5 % was seen. These polymers could be beneficial for several biomedical applications, such as developing formulations for temperature-triggered drug delivery.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Investigating oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate thermoresponsive copolymers |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2024.113266 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2024.113266 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy > Pharmaceutics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194505 |
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