Poly-Sarcosines

Polysarcosine (PSR) – originating from the natural, non-toxic amino acid sarcosine (N-Methylglycine) – is the simplest polypeptoid and a newly rediscovered biocompatible and degradable polymer. Polysarcosine has been employed in a number of drug delivery systems, including dendrimers [1,2], polymer micelles [3,4], polyplexes [5], protein conjugates [6,7] and micro-[8-11] and nanoparticles [12-18], polymersomes [19] and nanotubes [20,21]. However, widespread use of PSR has been hampered by lack of commercially-available functional PSR in good quality.

The use of PSR with functional head- and tail-groups for bioconjugation is comparable to the well-known PEGylation technology.