This technology is an alcohol-functionalized polyketal “smart” polymer that degrades in response to specific temperature and pH conditions, enabling controlled, prolonged delivery of small molecules for applications such as fragrance release and drug delivery.
Polyketals are polymers that are water-soluble, pH-degradable, and exhibit extraordinary temperature response, and thus are used in a variety of emerging “smart” material applications, such as drug or fragrance delivery. A challenge remains to synthesize smart materials, such as polyketals, with optimal lower critical solution temperature (LCST) behavior, while maintaining pH-degradability and temperature modulated solubility to ensure site-specific delivery of small molecules.
This technology is an alcohol-functionalized polyketal “smart” polymer that degrades in response to specific temperature and pH conditions, enabling controlled, prolonged delivery of small molecules. The polyketal can be functionalized with alcohols either by synthesizing a specialized, degradable linker to attach alcohols to the polyketal main-chain, or by functionalizing an end-group of the polyketal and polyethylene glycol (PEG) with alcohols. This material has been demonstrated to encapsulate fragrances in both PEG-ketal and polyketal chemistries, both of which are cost effective, utilize mild synthesis conditions, result in excellent solubility of the polymer in solvents of interest, and yield high conjugation capacity. As such, this technology is ideal for applications such as prolonged fragrance release and controlled drug delivery.
Jeffrey Thomas Koberstein, Ph.D.
IR CU19040
Licensing Contact: Dovina Qu