Compartmentalized Intracellular Click Chemistry with Biodegradable Polymersomes.

Polymersome nanoreactors that can be employed as artificial organelles have gained much interest over the past decades. Such systems often include biological catalysts (i.e., enzymes) so that they can undertake chemical reactions in cellulo. Examples of nanoreactor artificial organelles that acquire metal catalysts in their structure are limited, and their application in living cells remains fairly restricted. In part, this shortfall is due to difficulties associated with constructing systems that maintain their stability in vitro, let alone the toxicity they impose on cells. In this paper, we demonstrate a biodegradable and biocompatible polymersome nanoreactor platform, which can be applied as artificial organelle in living cells. We show the ability of our artificial organelles to, covalently and non-covalently, incorporate tris(triazolylmethyl)amine ligands complexing Cu(I) metal in their membrane. Such artificial organelles are capable of effectively catalyzing CuAAC reactions intracellularly, without compromising the cells' integrity. Our platform represents a step forward in the application of polymersome-based nanoreactors as artificial organelles. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.