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Updated: Oct 17, 2025

Composite Scaffolds of Interfacial Polyelectrolyte Fibers for Temporally Controlled Release of Biomolecules
Published on: August 19, 2015
Bioactive Synthetic Polymers
Kenward Jung1, Nathaniel Corrigan1, Edgar H H Wong1
1Cluster for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD), Australian Centre for Nanomedicine (ACN), and School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
Abstract:
Synthetic polymers are omnipresent in society as textiles and packaging materials, in construction and medicine, among many other important applications. Alternatively, natural polymers play a crucial role in sustaining life and allowing organisms to adapt to their environments by performing key biological functions such as molecular recognition and transmission of genetic information. In general, the synthetic and natural polymer worlds are completely separated due to the inability for synthetic polymers to perform specific biological functions; in some cases, synthetic polymers cause uncontrolled and unwanted biological responses. However, owing to the advancement of synthetic polymerization techniques in recent years, new synthetic polymers have emerged that provide specific biological functions such as targeted molecular recognition of peptides, or present antiviral, anticancer, and antimicrobial activities. In this review, the emergence of this generation of bioactive synthetic polymers and their bioapplications are summarized. Finally, the future opportunities in this area are discussed.
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