Co-reporter: Yangwei Deng, Tao Zou, Xinfeng Tao, Vincent Semetey, Sylvain Trepout, Sergio Marco, Jun Ling, and Min-Hui Li
pp:
Publication Date(Web):September 21, 2015
DOI: 10.1021/acs.biomac.5b00930
Biocompatible amphiphilic block copolymers composed of polysarcosine (PSar) and poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) were synthesized using ring-opening polymerization of sarcosine N-thiocarboxyanhydride initiated by oxyamine-ended PCL and characterized by NMR, SEC, and DSC. Self-assembling of two triblock copolymers PSar8-b-PCL28-b-PSar8 (CS7) and PSar16-b-PCL40-b-PSar16 (CS10) in dilute solution was studied in detail toward polymersome formation using thin-film hydration and nanoprecipitation techniques. A few giant vesicles were obtained by thin-film hydration from both copolymers and visualized by confocal laser scanning microscope. Unilamellar sheets and nanofibers (with 8–10 nm thickness or diameter) were obtained by nanoprecipitation at room temperature and observed by Cryo-TEM. These lamellae and fibrous structures were transformed into worm-like cylinders and spheres (D ∼ 30–100 nm) after heating to 65 °C (>Tm,PCL). Heating CS10 suspensions to 90 °C led eventually to multilamellar polymersomes (D ∼ 100–500 nm). Mechanism II, where micelles expand to vesicles through water diffusion and hydrophilic core forming, was proposed for polymersome formation. A cell viability test confirmed the self-assemblies were not cytotoxic.