Page 796 - Carrahers_Polymer_Chemistry,_Eighth_Edition

Appendix L

Combinatorial Chemistry

Langer and coworkers synthesized a series of copolymers containing various amounts of diacrylate
and amine monomers investigating copolymer composition with the ability to act as transport
DNA into cells. They screened 140 copolymers as synthetic gene-delivery vectors. Of these 56
were able to bind to DNA. These polymers were then screened for their ability to facilitate the
transfer of plasmid DNA into a common monkey cancer cell line. Two of the copolymers with quite
varied compositions showed good activity—one expected and the other unexpected. The expected
copolymer composition would have been a selected composition in a typical search and the other
would have been omitted. Thus, combinatorial-like approaches can offer unexpected results to
problems.

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