[Progress in researches on synthetic antimicrobial macromolecular polymers]

Broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides provide a new way to address the urgent growing problem of bacterial resistance. However, the limited natural resources and the high cost of extraction and purification of natural antimicrobial peptides can not meet the requirements of clinical application. In order to solve this problem, researchers have utilized two basic common structural features (amphiphilic and cationic) for designing and preparing synthetic antimicrobial macromolecular polymers. During the last decade, several kinds of amphiphilic polymers, including arylamide oligomers, phenylene ethynylenes, polymethacrylates, polynorbornenes as well as nylon-3 polymers have been synthesized. In this paper, the structures, antibacterial activities and selectivities of these polymers are reviewed, and the effects of molecular size, polarity and ratio of hydrophobic groups, positive charge density on antibacterial activity and selectivity are also summarized.