Carbohydrate-based polymers

Nowadays, a strategic area of research is the development of polymers based on carbohydrates due to the worldwide focus on sustainable materials. Since the necessary multi-step synthesis of carbohydrate-based polymers is not economical for the production of commodity plastics, functionalization of synthetic polymers by carbohydrates has become a current subject of research. This aims to prepare new bioactive and biocompatible polymers capable of exerting a temporary therapeutic function. The large variety of methods of anchoring carbohydrates onto polymers as well as the current and potential applications of the functionalized polymers has been discussed recently in a critical review [171]. Of importance is that such modification renders not only functionality but also biodegradability to the synthetic polymers. 

Some of the potential uses of the fats and oils found in plants have been reviewed and some uses of carbohydrate-based polymers briefly discussed. Plants contain a whole variety of other chemicals including amino acids, terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloids, etc. When the potential for these naturally occurring materials are combined with the secondary products that can be obtained by fermentation or other microbial processes or by traditional chemical transformations, the array of chemicals that can readily be created from renewable resources is huge. In this section a few of the more interesting examples are considered. 

Some reviews have been published on the synthetic carbohydrate-based polymers and glycopolymers [11-15]. However, they refer mainly to poly(vinylsaccharide)s and other conventional functionalized polymers having sugars as groups pendant from the main chain of the polymer. In this chapter we shall describe those sugar-based monomers which lead to polymers having the sugar units incorporated into... 

Polyamides and poljmrethanes have been the carbohydrate-based polymers most widely studied. The preparation of hydrophilic nylon-type polyamides containing... 

The animal and plant worlds have yielded some of the more fascinating carbohydrate-based polymers as homo- and heteropolysaccharides, as glycoproteins, as lipopolysac-charides, and as glycolipids, to mention a few. Blood group substances, antigenic determi-... 

Stenzel, M.H., Davis, T.P., Fane, A.G. Honeycomb structured porous films prepared from carbohydrate based polymers synthesized via the RAFT process. J. Mater. Chem. 13, 2090-2097 (2003)... 

Polyplexes are formed from many cationic polymers such as histones, PEI, dendrimers (pDMAEM) or carbohydrate-based polymers such as chitosan and cyclodextrin. Polyplexes are smaller in size than lipoplexes, which is a major physicochemical property for gene delivery, especially in vivoJ... 

Cameiro M.J., Fernandes A., Figueiredo C.M., Fortes A.G., Freitas A.M., Synthesis of carbohydrate based polymers,... 

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