bioactivities and biodegradability. Primary amine-initiated NCA polymerization is the most widely used method to prepare polypeptides. However
this polymerization is super sensitive to moisture
with slow reaction rate and side reactions
and difficult to obtain polypeptides with high molecular weight. Recently
Prof. Liu
et al
. at East China University of Science and Technology utilized Lithium Hexamethyldisilazide (LiHMDS) as the catalyst to initiate ring opening polymerization of NCA. This is the first demonstration of moisture insensitive NCA polymerization under atmosphere condition. This NCA polymerization can be completed within a few minutes to a few hours and successfully produces poly-BLG with number average molecular weight over 2.8 × 10
5
g/mol. This research opens the era for easy and efficient synthesis of polypeptides and builds the foundation for large-scale application of polypeptides as biomedical materials.
Song Z Y, Han Z Y, Lv S X, Chen C Y, Chen L, Yin L C, Cheng J J . Chem Soc Rev , 2017 . 46 ( 21 ): 6570 - 6599 . DOI:10.1039/C7CS00460Ehttp://doi.org/10.1039/C7CS00460E .
Wu Y M, Zhang D F, Ma P C, Zhou R Y, Hua L, Liu R H . Nat Commun , 2018 . 9 ( 1 ): 5297 DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-07711-yhttp://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07711-y .