Synthesis of Glycoconjugated Branched Macromolecular Architectures.

The applications developed by polymer chemistry using saccharides have significantly expanded, thus it is required that continuous efforts be made to develop routes for preparing glycoconjugated polymers as well as utilizing sugar resources for the polymer synthesis. We now provide an overview focusing on the preparations of the vinyl polymers with three-dimensional structures utilizing functionality of saccharides and the syntheses of glycoconjugated branched vinyl polymers. As the first topic, we describe that star-like reversed-type polymeric aggregates have been generated by end-functionalized polymers with saccharides, in which the functionalities of malto-oligosaccharides have been utilized to control the sizes of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains of the aggregates. The second section describes the star polymer syntheses with the arm numbers regulated by the functionalities of glucose, inositol, sucrose, and cyclodextrins. In the last half sections, the preparations of a new class of glycoconjugates have been reviewed, which includes glycopolymer stars, hyperbranched glycopolymers, star microgels with a glycoconjugated periphery or core, and poly(vinyl saccharide) microgels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]