Recent Advances in Post-polymerization Modifications on Polypeptides: Synthesis and Applications.

Polypeptides, a kind of very promising biomaterial, have shown a wide range of applications due to their excellent biocompatibility, easy accessibility, and structural variability. To synthesize polypeptides with desired functions, post-polymerization modification (PPM) plays an important role in introducing novel chemical structure on their side-chains. The key to PPM strategy is to develop highly selective and efficient reactions that can couple the additional functional moieties with pre-installed side-chain functionalities on polypeptides. In this minireview, classic PPM approaches and their recent progresses are summarized and categorized into five sections, including various reactions on unsaturated alkyl, oxygen-, nitrogen-, sulfur-containing and other special functional groups. In addition, we also highlight the applications of the resultant structure-diversified polypeptides in the field of biomaterial.