Enzymes play a vital role in key physiological processes, serving as essential components for advanced materials designed to function under diverse conditions. However, their inherent instability limits their use in the vast majority of enzyme-based biomaterial applications. To address these limitations, the synthesis of well-defined enzyme-polymer conjugates has emerged as a promising strategy, particularly for sustainable biomaterials. This contribution will focus on recent advancements in high-yield methods, such as oxygen-tolerant controlled radical polymerization and organocatalysis, enabling the synthesis of enzyme-polymer conjugates under biologically compatible conditions. These hybrid materials—hydrophilic, responsive, or amphiphilic—exhibit unique self-assembly behaviors, offering broad potential applications.
Additionally, the synthesis and characterization of pH- and temperature-responsive lipase-polymer conjugates at both the supramolecular and single-molecule level will be discussed. Single nanoparticle analysis has revealed that these biohybrids demonstrate enhanced enzymatic activity compared to native lipases while maintaining temperature-responsive control. A direct correlation between nanoparticle size and catalytic efficiency was observed, with smaller nanoparticles exhibiting higher activity. Their exceptional long-term stability, combined with a distinctive catalytic profile, highlights their potential for controlled biocatalysis and sustainable industrial applications.

The synthesis of sequence-defined polymers has garnered significant interest in recent years for various applications, including biotechnology and material science.[1] One of the main example is shown by J.-F. Lutz group with the preparation of uniform poly(phosphodiester)s using stepwise automated phosphoramidite chemistry.[2] Such macromolecules are composed of an extended monomer alphabet of different mass enabling data storage and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) sequencing.[3] Our group proved the feasibility of this concept by introducing amine-thiol-ene conjugation based on thiolactone chemistry allowing precise control over the sequence.[4] However, the aforementioned strategies are usually conducted on solid support and thus, restricted to milligram quantities. Our group has recently shown that alternatives approaches are appropriate to overcome these limitations.[5] Specifically, sequence-defined oligoamides can be obtained in gram scale via solution phase chemistry using a monodispersed soluble support, or via a support-free protocol. These oligomers not only function as information carriers, but also as precursor to develop new class of materials. Herein, we introduce this new class of architecture, their role, and their application.

Petrochemical polymers are ubiquitous in the modern world, with a wide variety of properties that are suitable for thousands of applications. Small changes in the polymer microstructure can result in significant differences in the material bulk properties, however, they typically solely contain carbon-carbon bonds in their backbones. While carbon-carbon bonds often provide stability and favourable properties, they restrict the options for the materials end-of-use. Incorporating bio-based monomers can add heteroatoms to the polymer backbones, allowing the design of recyclable or degradable materials.[1] Among the available bio-based monomers, bi-cyclic sugar-derived isohexides are a family of stereoisomers where the hydroxyl groups vary from being endo-endo, endo-exo, or exo-exo. This difference in hydroxyl stereochemistry has been shown to affect the polymer mechanical strength,[2] and change the material from being elastomeric to semicrystalline.[3]
Building on previous work based on thiol-ene reactions, this study uses amino-ene reactions to synthesise polymer networks with isohexide monomers and a variety of amine linkers. The thermal and mechanical behaviour of the resultant polymer networks were characterised to show trends in the material properties, and the end-of-life hydrolysis of the materials has been explored.

Biodegradable polymers are often proposed as a strategy to reduce the accumulation of plastic products and microplastics in the open environment. An important aspect for successful market implementation of products made from biodegradable polymers is the ability to program the biodegradation characteristics to match with the product requirements during use ánd end-of-life (EOL). This presentation shows how biodegradable polymer blends and composites can be designed and processed to match both their functional and EOL requirements. New polymer formulations based on poly(hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), poly(hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyhexanoate) (PHBH), poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) were developed and assessed on their processability and functionality for applications in agriculture and horticulture [1], [2]. Processing was demonstrated on laboratory and pilot scale via twin-screw extrusion, injection moulding, film blowing and net extrusion yielding demonstration products for agricultural netting, growbags and plant propagation products. The functionality of these demonstration products was subsequently assessed during real-life greenhouse cultivation trials. In these trials it was shown that products made from these polymers retained their full mechanical integrity during use and that there is no impact on crop cultivation when biodegradable polymers are used. Finally, biodegradation testing shows that after crop harvest these products can be successfully processed via industrial composting routes or fully biodegrade in the soil in which they are placed without the accumulation of persistent microplastics.

The synthesis of functional degradable polymers has garnered interest in the past years. Among the available degradable materials, aliphatic polycarbonates (APCs) have gained attention due to their biodegradability, biocompatibility and low toxicity. , These features make them attractive, not only as potential biomaterials but also in broader applications, including consumer products. Furthermore, APCs can be easily synthesised from biosourced chemicals making them a sustainable alternative to commercially used formulation polymers. Polymer structures can strongly influence the properties of consumer products and affect their biodegradation. , In this regard, the use of degradable APCs in place of common non-degradable polymers offers an opportunity to design environmentally benign consumer formulations. Herein, we synthesised a series of novel water-soluble functional aliphatic polycarbonates with a wide range of molecular weights and architectures. These APCs were further used as viscosity adjusters to explore their effect on the properties of consumer products.

Synthetic polymers became a key element in drug development in the last decades. They can act as a drug by mimicking natural macromolecules such as peptides and their functions or open new ways to interact with signaling cascades in the human body, and also increase the efficiency of small-molecular drugs by, for example, delivering them to a specific point in the body or preventing their rapid degradation. [1, 2] Nevertheless, most synthetic polymers exhibit a molecular weight distribution, and despite the starting and end group, the incorporation of an exactly defined number of different functional groups, or an exactly defined distance in between these groups, is cumbersome. Yet, these properties may be of great advantage when designing synthetic, bioactive macromolecules. Different methods are available to increase the degree of definition of the desired systems. In our work, we use solid phase peptoid synthesis (SPS) [3] or iterative exponential growth (IEG) [4] to generate sequence-defined macromolecules for different purposes. We connected, for example, polymeric fragments on a peptoid backbone via SPS to obtain branched polymers with different functional and functionalizable groups suitable for the stabilization of drug delivery vehicles and multivalent receptor targeting; [5] further, we are working on the generation of novel, cationic, sequence-defined macromolecules that can mimic peptide functions via IEG, a synthetic method that is, until now, rarely used for the generation of bioactive molecules. In summary, those methods provide a toolbox to expand the synthetic possibilities and the number of accessible structures when generating sequence-defined, bioactive macromolecules.