Protein–polymer conjugates: synthetic approaches by controlled radical polymerizations and interesting applications

Protein–polymer conjugates are of interest to researchers in diverse fields. Attachment of polymers to proteins results in improved pharmacokinetics, which is important in medicine. From an engineering standpoint, conjugates are exciting because they exhibit properties of both the biomolecules and synthetic polymers. This allows the activity of the protein to be altered or tuned, anchoring to surfaces, and supramolecular self-assembly. Thus, there is broad interest in straightforward synthetic methods to prepare protein–polymer conjugates. Controlled radical polymerization (CRP) techniques have emerged as excellent strategies to make conjugates because the resulting polymers have narrow molecular weight distributions, targeted molecular weights, and attach to specific sites on proteins. Herein, recent advances in the synthesis and application of protein–polymer conjugates by CRP are highlighted.