Microgel-coupled proteins

As carriers for proteins and enzymes biocompatible reactive microgels must be synthesized which are soluble in the serum at 37 °C. Moreover they should be hydrophilic enough that no ionic monomers are needed but they should not be soluble in water. An inert comonomer should serve as a spacer as well as a reactive solvent that may dissolve solid comonomers. The coupling reaction should be possible under mild reaction conditions. 

For this reaction, soluble monomers are needed, e.g. a mixture of N AT-methylene bisacrylamide as crosslinker, methacrylamide as an inert comonomer, methacrylic acid as ionic comonomer for stabilization [309] and methacryl ami-do-AT-acetaldehyde-dimethylacetal as functional comonomer. The coupling with proteins is only possible if the free aldehyde groups are accessible, i.e. if they are not located in the interior of the microgel. This condition can only be fulfilled by a careful choice of the comonomer composition in the reaction mixture [291]. 

A microgel of a dz = 76 nm which is suitable for coupling with proteins, can be prepared by emulsion terpolymerization of NjAT -tetramethylene bisacrylamide, n-hexylmethacrylamide and propene acid amide-N-(4-methyl-2-butyl-1,3-diox-olane) [291 ]. The diameter of these microgels may be varied by the concentration of the emulsifier (Fig. 57) and is rather uniform. As the CMC of this system is about 2.5 X10"3 mol SDS/1, it may be assumed that below this value the copolymerization essentially takes place in the monomer droplets, whereas at higher concentrations of SDS preferentially the monomers in micelles are polymerized. 

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