Polymer therapeutics—polymers as drugs, drug and protein conjugates and gene delivery systems: Past, present and future opportunities

As the 21st century begins we are witnessing a paradigm shift in medical practice. Whereas the use of polymers in biomedical materials applications, for example as prostheses, medical devices, cont...

Polymer therapeutics: clinical applications and challenges for development.

α,β-poly(asparthylhydrazide)–glycidyltrimethylammonium chloride copolymers (PAHy–GTA): novel polymers with potential for DNA delivery

Hydrophilic polycations form complexes when mixed with plasmids. Following functionalisation with glycidyltrimethylammonium chloride (GTA) alpha,beta-poly(asparthylhydrazide) (PAHy), a water-soluble synthetic macromolecule, becomes polycationic and potentially useful for systemic gene delivery. Initially the biocompatibility of PAHy and PAHy-GTA derivatives with different degrees of positive charge substitution were studied and it was shown that PAHy-GTA was neither haemolytic nor cytotoxicity up to 1 mg/ml. After intravenous injection (125)I-labelled PAHy-GTA derivative containing 46 mol% (PAHy-GTA(b)) of trimethylammonium groups did not accumulate in the liver (4.1+/-0.9% of the recovered…