April 16th, 2015 - LMGP Seminar - Valessa Barbier - A new polymeric scaffold for biomimetic applications: synthetic membranes, artificial channels and multivalent ligands for molecular recognition

Valessa Barbier, maître de conférences Université Paris-Est de Créteil

Département de Chimie Moléculaire, CNRS-UJF, Grenoble

Abstract                             

In the framework of research projects aimed at designing polymers with biomimetic features, we recently developed a new polymeric scaffold, dubbed OCD, with geminal substituants located on every third carbon along a polymethylene backbone. Biomimetic nano-objets have been designed such as synthetic membranes made by the self-assembly of amphiphilic liquid crystal (LC) PEG-OCD block copolymers. Crown-ethers substituted OCDs  have also been developed as potential biological membrane permeabilizers. We recently showed that they form cation-selective pores within bilipidic membranes, and display an anti-tumoral activity. More recently, a new family of glycopolymers have been synthesized by post-modification of an OCD scaffold and their interaction with carbohydrate-binding proteins have been investigated. The use of glycoOCDs to develop glycoaminoglycans mimics and biomimetic surfaces will be discussed