Polyphosphoesters as a new platform for the design of particulate drug delivery systems

Thanks to their biocompatibility and degradability properties, polyphosphates are appealing polymers for biomedical applications. In contrast to aliphatic polyesters, such as poly(ε-caprolactone) and poly(lactide), the pentavalency of the phosphorus atom allows the easy modification of the polyphosphate properties by simply adjusting the nature, the length and the functionality of the polyphosphate pendant groups. Therefore, macromolecular engineering of polyphosphoesters was applied to design well-defined architectures and functionalities adapted to drug nanocarriers.

In a first approach, amphiphilic block copolymers are synthesized by organo-catalyzed ring-opening polymerization process for the synthesis of a range of PEO-b-polyphosphate bearing various pendant groups. Post-polymerization thiol-ene click reactions preformed on PEO-b-polyphosphate copolymers was also investigated to improve the hydrophobicity of the polyphosphate. The self-assembly of these PEO-b-polyphosphate copolymers into micelles was investigated, particularly, the effect of the nature of the polyphosphate pendant groups (i) on the micelles characteristics, (ii) on the encapsulation of a poorly soluble drug and (iii) on the drug release profile. The toxicity of the different amphiphilic block copolymers was also evaluated by live/dead cell viability assays.

In a second approach, double hydrophilic copolymers based on polyphosphoesters have been used as templating agent for the synthesis of calcium carbonate particles. Indeed, the use of such microparticles is becoming more and more attractive in many fields especially for biomedical applications for which fine tuning of size, morphology and crystalline form of CaCO3 particles is crucial. Although some structuring compounds, like hyaluronic acid, give satisfying results, the control of the particle structure still has to be improved. To this end, we evaluated the CaCO3 structuring capacity of the well-defined double hydrophilic block copolymers composed of poly(ethylene oxide) and of a polyphosphoester segment with affinity for calcium like poly(phosphotriester)s bearing pendant carboxylic acids or poly(phosphodiester)s with a negatively charged oxygen atom on each repeating monomer unit.