Triphilic block copolymers with perfluorocarbon moieties in aqueous systems and their biochemical perspectives

Synthetic polymers incorporating fluorine segments or blocks are highly interesting for biomedical and pharmaceutical research due to the singular biological activity imparted by the fluorinated moieties. However, rather demanding traditional living polymerization techniques required to obtain well-defined block copolymers had typically been a major hurdle for a faster development of the field. Recently, block copolymers and telechelic polymers comprising segments with different chemical affinities, therefore termed as "polyphilic'', have become easily accessible, thanks to alternative controlled radical polymerization techniques. They can be applied alone or in conjunction with novel quantitative post-polymerization reactions which allow to "click'' additional segments via functional groups. Triphilic polymers exhibit a rich variety of morphologies in solvents selective for one of the blocks including multicompartment micelles, which forecasts innovative pharmaceutical applications as for example vehicles of nanometre size for the simultaneous delivery of incompatible drug components to cells. In this highlight we focus on our recent contributions, current trends and perspectives regarding triphilic block copolymers and telechelic polymers formed exclusively from hydrophilic, lipophilic and fluorophilic building blocks.