# A Versatile Polymer Platform for Biomedical Applications

> **NIH NIH R35** · GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · 2022 · $360,717

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The merger of synthetic polymers and biological systems has a significant history, but many of
the materials chosen for targeted applications are selected due to their commercial availability
or ease of access. These materials rarely elicit all of the features that would be desirable such
as degradability, biocompatibility, and control over polymer architecture and composition. This
program takes a ground-up approach to developing a highly versatile polymer platform that is
driven by chemical innovation in order to incorporate the design features and flexibility needed
for interfacing with biology. This is achieved by starting with the robust chemistry of ruthenium-
based olefin metathesis and merging it with the power of substrate-directed chemical reactions.
With this general strategy, incredibly robust ligation reactions have been designed to rapidly
conjugate living polymers directly to other macromolecules, thereby removing the need to go
through traditional click chemistry. This will lead to highly simplifying bioconjugation strategies,
while also presenting opportunities for efficient ruthenium removal. This concept also enables
the design of entirely new monomer families that give polymers with responsive chemistry in the
backbone for programmable targeting, degradation, and cargo release. By changing the
structure, fine tuning of degradation kinetics can be optimized and also redesigned to maintain
biocompatibility. Lastly, this strategy will tackle a longstanding challenge in understanding the
interaction of synthetic polymers with living system: architecture. A convergent strategy will be
developed to give control of both the location and degree of branching in synthetic polymer
systems. This will lead to the dissection of structure-property relationships in the polymer
topology that is currently inaccessible with modern techniques. All of these methods combined
will lead to a truly “medicinal chemistry” approach to polymer design where structures can be
built, designed, and optimized with the specific end goals in mind.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10434005
- **Project number:** 5R35GM133784-04
- **Recipient organization:** GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
- **Principal Investigator:** Will Ryan Gutekunst
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $360,717
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-01 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10434005

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10434005, A Versatile Polymer Platform for Biomedical Applications (5R35GM133784-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10434005. Licensed CC0.

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