Multifunctional Protein-polymer Hybrids

Enzymes are fundamental in the development of new technologies and biomedical applications, but their low stability outside biological environments limits their use. By integrating biocatalysis and applied polymer chemistry, we design chemical tools that enable proteins to acquire new functionalities through the creation of controlled and oriented configurations of protein-polymer biohybrids.
We decorate protein surfaces with polymeric materials and develop encapsulation strategies in polymeric nanogels that can be modified with functional payloads. These approaches allow the fabrication of nanocarriers for the targeted delivery of antibodies or therapeutic enzymes, as well as highly efficient chemoenzymatic nanoreactors. Furthermore, we work on protein-polymer conjugates through grafting-from and grafting-to strategies to obtain robust and stable systems.