Transfering the protein repellent properties of pN-AM from macroscale to nanoscale

BIGLIONE, CATALINA ; NEUMANN-TRAN, THI MAI PHUONG ; NAVARRO, LUCILA; ACHAZI, KATHARINA; KLINGER, DANIEL

Encuentro; XXI Encuentro de Superficies y Materiales Nanoestructurados; 2022

Biological fouling is a usual phenomenon thatdepicts a big issue in diverse applications such as in biomedical devices, inindustrial or marine appliances. [1] Consequently protein repellent materialshave been developed steadily to overcome these non-specific protein adsorptionson solid surfaces. [2] One of the key strategies for imparting adhesionresistance involves the functionalization of surfaces with poly(ethyleneglycol) (PEG) or oligo(ethylene glycol). Several alternatives to PEG-basedcoatings have also been designed over the past decade. In this sense, poly(N-Acryloylmorpholine),(pN-AM) is another hydrophilic and nontoxic material that exhibit repellentproperties. Furthermore, it presents unique properties such as goodpolymerization efficiency and high solubility in various solvents. [3]Thus, our inspiration for this research was the proteinrepellent activity that acryloyl morpholine (N-AM) based polymers presented inbulk materials. We wanted to evaluate if this property could be transfer to thenanoscale range or even increased. So far, N-AM was reported in the applicationin nanoscale as micelles for drug delivery, but no studies were done so farregarding their protein repellent properties. For this purpose, we designednanogels based on N-AM using different anionic co-monomer such as acrylic acid(AA), 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid (AMPS), sodium4-styrenesulfonate (4-SS), and N,N’- Methylenbisacrylamide (BIS) ascrosslinker. The synthesis was performed by inverse miniemulison. The nanogelsobtained presented sizes in the range of 200-400 nm in aqueous solution. Theirzeta potential was analyzed finding negatives values, as expected, due to thepresence of the acidic co-monomer. A general tendency was found, whileincreasing the amount of acidic monomer, the zeta potential values decrease.TEM micrographs revealed the spherical shape of the nanogels and their highmonodispersity. Furthermore, their cytotoxicity was tested in different celllines confirming their biocompatibility in nanoscale. Regarding the proteinrepellent properties, a polyethersulfone surface was coated with the differentnanogels and the protein absorption was assessed. The repellent capacity of allthe nanogels was demonstrated.Considering the promising results, we decided toevaluate these systems for trigger released by degradation in presence ofglutathione. Thus, we introduced a degradable crosslinker, N,N’-Bis(acryloyl)cystamine instead of BIS. We proved that the NGs can be degradedin the presence of 1,4-Dithiothreitol (DTT) in short times such as 1 h. Inconclusion, we developed a nanogel platform with protein repellent propertieswhich presents high potential in the field of biomedicine, for instance, forcontrolled drug delivery.