Poly[(ethylene oxide)-co-(methylene ethylene oxide)]: A hydrolytically degradable poly(ethylene oxide) platform

Pontus Lundberg,Bongjae F. Lee, Sebastiaan A. van den Berg, Eric D. Pressly, Annabelle Lee, Craig J. Hawker, and Nathaniel A. Lynd

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/mz300477t

This group synthesizes a degradable PEG-based polymer by making a copolymer of ethylene oxide with epichlorohydrin followed by elimination of the halide to incorporate degradable ethylene methylene oxide copolymer with ethylene oxide. This polymer degrades as pH 5.0 at 37 C, but is relatively stable over 70 hours at pH 7.4 at 6 C.