Tailored silyl ether monomers enable backbone-degradable polynorbornene-based linear, bottlebrush and star copolymers through ROMP.

Ring-opening metathesis polymerization of norbornene-based (macro)monomers is a powerful approach for the synthesis of macromolecules with diverse compositions and complex architectures. Nevertheless, a fundamental limitation of polymers prepared by this strategy is their lack of facile degradability, limiting their utility in a range of applications. Here we describe a class of readily available bifunctional silyl ether-based cyclic olefins that copolymerize efficiently with norbornene-based (macro)monomers to provide copolymers with backbone degradability under mildly acidic aqueous conditions and degradation rates that can be tuned over several orders of magnitude, depending on the silyl ether substituents. These monomers can be used to manipulate the in vivo biodistribution and clearance rate of polyethylene glycol-based bottlebrush polymers, as well as to synthesize linear, bottlebrush and brush-arm star copolymers with degradable segments. We expect that this work will enable preparation of degradable polymers by ROMP for biomedical applications, responsive self-assembly and improved sustainability.

Given its mild-conditions, living nature, and exceptional functional group tolerance, ROMP of norbornene-based compounds has been widely used to generate functional materials for applications including resin technologies, biomedicine, catalysis, and sensing.[1-7] In addition, “graft-through” ROMP of norbornene-based macromonomers (MMs) that carry drug molecules, imaging agents, or diverse polymer sidechains has enabled rapid access to advanced polymer architectures for combination drug delivery, molecular imaging, and self-assembly.[8-16] Nevertheless, the lack of facile degradability of polynorbornene-based polymers is a key limitation (Figure 1a). For example, brush-arm star polymers (BASPs) prepared via ROMP of a norbornene-terminated polyethylene glycol (PEG) MM conjugated to the angiotensin receptor blocker telmisartan displayed in vivo persistence over several months.[17] It would be ideal to impart facile and tunable degradability into this important class of polymers without otherwise sacrificing their performance. Multiple examples of degradable ROMP polymers prepared via the use of non-norbornene-based monomers have been reported.[18-21] Though elegant, these monomers sometimes require lengthy syntheses; they display limited copolymerization efficiency with norbornene derivatives; or the polymers they produce are degradable only under forcing conditions. In addition, one example of a copolymer of norbornene and an oxadiazinone was reported to display sluggish hydrolysis under aqueous conditions, even at pH 1.[20] A straightforward approach to well-defined backbone-degradable co-polymers of norbornene-based (macro)monomers would significantly expand the functional scope of materials prepared by ROMP and, combined with the advent of catalytic ROMP, could make ROMP the go-to choice for the synthesis of advanced materials.[22]

Figure 1.

Study design and initial results.

a. Polynorbornenes prepared via ROMP feature an all-carbon backbone, preventing their facile hydrolytic degradation. b. Proposed approach for introducing degradable segments into ROMP copolymers via copolymerization with 8-membered ring bifunctional silyl-ether-based olefins. G3 = Grubbs 3rd-generation bispyridyl complex. EVE = ethyl vinyl ether. c. Synthetic scheme for the synthesis of backbone-degradable PEG-based bottlebrush polymer (iPrSi-PEG) derived from copolymerization of a norbornene-terminated polyethylene glycol macromonomer (PEG-MM) with an eight-membered cyclic bifunctional silyl ether monomer (iPrSi, 1:1 molar ratio of monomers). Acidic degradation cleaves the polynorbornene backbone leading to the production of oligomeric PEG-based fragments. d. GPC traces before and after forced hydrolysis of iPrSi-PEG and a traditional PEG bottlebrush homopolymer (PEG) demonstrating that only the copolymer undergoes degradation. *indicates residual PEG-MM from the ROMP reaction.

Here, a class of bifunctional silyl-ether-based cyclic olefins that offers a general solution to this problem is described (Figure 1b). These monomers copolymerize with a variety of norbornene derivatives including small molecules and MMs, enabling the formation of backbone-degradable copolymers with controlled sizes, narrow molar mass distributions, and varied architecture (linear, bottlebrush, and BASP). Depending on the choice of silyl-ether substituents used, the degradation kinetics of the resulting copolymers can be tuned over several orders-of-magnitude. In addition, by simply adding a bifunctional silyl ether-based monomer during one step of a sequential copolymerization, block copolymers with selectively degradable segments can be readily formed. Finally, PEG-based bottlebrush polymers with degradable backbones are shown to be biocompatible and to display long-term in vivo biodistribution (BD) and clearance profiles that are distinct from their non-degradable counterparts.

Results and Discussion

Design of Bifunctional Silyl Ether Monomers for Backbone Degradable ROMP Copolymers

Given the precedence for using bifunctional silyl ethers as cleavable linkers in biological/biomaterials applications,[23,24] we chose to explore bifunctional silyl-ether-containing cyclic olefins as monomers to potentially introduce hydrolytically labile backbones into ROMP-derived polymers. A small set of bifunctional silyl-ether-based monomers, including rings of various sizes and cis versus trans olefins, was screened in a search for candidates that could copolymerize with norbornene-terminated 3.2 kDa PEG-MM.[12] Gratifyingly, when the relatively easy-to-synthesize (five steps in 14% overall yield on the 1 g scale from commercially available materials) eight-membered ring iPrSi (Figure 1c) was mixed with PEG-MM in a 1:1 molar ratio and exposed to 0.01 equivalents (total target DP 200) of 3rd-generation Grubbs bispyridyl complex (G3) for 30 minutes, gel permeation chromatography (GPC) of the reaction mixture revealed the presence of a new polymer, iPrSi-PEG (Figure 1d, blue trace), with low dispersity (Đ = 1.14) and a slightly shorter retention time to that of an analogous DP = 100 bottlebrush polymer prepared using PEG-MM alone (PEG, Figure 1d, black trace). 1H NMR spectroscopy confirmed the high conversion of iPrSi and PEG-MM (Supplementary Figure 1); thus, unless these two monomers completely homopolymerize, they must have formed a copolymer.

To preliminarily assess whether or not iPrSi-PEG is a statistical copolymer rather than a block copolymer, we exposed the polymerization reaction mixture to 0.2 M HCl in 10:1 dioxane/water and analyzed the resulting products by GPC. As expected for a statistical copolymer, iPrSi-PEG degraded (Figure 1d, blue dashed trace) into various lower mass species including identifiable one-, two-, and three-repeat-unit fragments (as determined by comparison to an independently prepared sample with target DP = 2, Supplementary Figure 2). In contrast, the homopolymer PEG did not degrade under these conditions (Figure 1d, black dashed trace). Analogous bottlebrush copolymers with target DPs of 20 (iPrSi-PEG) and 60 (iPrSi-PEG) yielded degradation products of similar size (Supplementary Figure 3), suggesting that the copolymerization of iPrSi and PEG-MM is efficient regardless of the target DP. In addition, MMs based on polylactic acid (PLA-MM), polystyrene (PS-MM)[25,26] (Supplementary Figure 4), and a drug (telmisartan) conjugate[27] (Supplementary Figure 5) could be used in the same manner to produce backbone degradable bottlebrush copolymers with PLA (iPrSi-PLA), PS (iPrSi-PS), and PEG-branch-drug-conjugated sidechains (iPrSi-TEL), respectively.

Probing the PEG-MM/iPrSi copolymerization in more detail, it was found that when greater than 1 equiv of iPrSi was used relative to PEG-MM, significantly worse results were obtained in terms of the molar mass dispersity (Supplementary Figure 6). Compared to seven- and nine-membered cyclic silyl ether analogs, which yielded copolymers with PEG-MM that degraded to form high molecular weight products suggestive of a more gradient or block-like copolymerization, iPrSi provided the optimal balance of statistical copolymerization efficiency and synthetic accessibility (Supplementary Figure 7). Density functional theory (DFT) calculations on the structures of cyclic silyl ethers of different ring sizes showed, as expected, that the amount of overall ring strain increased from 7- to 9-membered silyl ethers although the calculated strain energies are markedly lower than that of norbornene (Supplementary Figure 8); the ability of iPrSi, but less so its 7- or 9-membered counterparts, to statistically copolymerize with norbornene derivatives may be dominated by kinetic factors. Lastly, a copolymer of cyclooctene (COE), an eight-membered cyclic olefin monomer commonly used in ROMP, and PEG-MM was prepared for comparison to the iPrSi copolymer. GPC analysis of this COE-containing copolymer revealed a dramatically broadened molar mass distribution (Supplementary Figure 9), which may be due to differences in the rate of COE homopolymerization or susceptibility to backbiting. Altogether, these results motivated further development of iPrSi as a platform for introducing degradable bonds into ROMP-derived copolymers.

Scope of Norbornene Monomers for Copolymerization with iPrSi

Next, the suitability of iPrSi for copolymerization with various commonly used norbornene structural motifs, NB1-NB4 (Figure 2a), was explored. Four copolymers iPrSi-NB where x = 1, 2, 3, or 4 were prepared by mixing NB1-NB4 with iPrSi in 1:1 ratio followed by addition of 0.02 equivalents (total target DP = 100) of G3 (Figure 2b). 1H NMR analysis of the crude reaction mixtures (Supplementary Figure 10) revealed good conversion of all monomers in ~30 min. The iPrSi-NB copolymers were analyzed by GPC before and after acidic hydrolysis. In all cases, the addition of iPrSi resulted in a modestly broadened molar mass distribution compared to the analogous NB homopolymer (Figure 2b, see Supplementary Table 1 for molecular weight details). Interestingly, iPrSi-NB1 and iPrSi-NB2 yielded significantly larger fragments after acidic degradation (Figure 2c and 2d, respectively) compared to iPrSi-NB3 and iPrSi-NB4 (Figure 2e and 2f, respectively); iPrSi-NB4 yielded the lowest molecular weight degradation fragments (Figure 2f, blue dashed line). This trend correlates with the expected ROMP reactivity of these norbornene derivatives: NB1 ~ NB2 > NB3 > NB4,[28] where relatively slow rates of norbornene homopolymerization correlate with a more statistical incorporation of iPrSi. Finally, reactivity ratios of 0.61 and 0.72 were measured for NB4 and iPrSi, respectively, confirming the statistical nature of this copolymerization (Supplementary Figure 11).

Figure 2.

Norbornene monomer scope.

a. Library of small-molecule norbornene derivatives NB1-NB4 with varying ROMP propagation rates used to investigate the scope of copolymerization with iPrSi. b. General synthetic scheme for the synthesis of copolymers of NB and iPrSi (iPrSi-NB). c. GPC traces for copolymers of iPrSi and NB1. d. GPC traces for copolymers of iPrSi and NB2. e. GPC traces for copolymers of iPrSi and NB3. f. GPC traces for copolymers of iPrSi and NB4. All of the copolymers degrade under acidic conditions, whereas homopolymers of NB1-NB4 do not. Moreover, the size of the degradation products correlates with the monomer reactivity, with the least reactive monomer NB4 yielding the smallest degradation products.

Scope of Cyclic Bifunctional Silyl Ethers for Backbone Degradable ROMP Copolymers

The ready availability of different dichlorosilanes should provide a straightforward means to tune the rate of copolymer degradation in this system. As a proof-of-concept, three additional silyl-ether based monomers: MeSi, EtSi, and PhSi (Figure 3a) were prepared following similar procedures for the synthesis of iPrSi (Supplementary Scheme 1). Copolymerizations of these monomers with PEG-MM (Figure 1b, total target DP = 60) provided a series of bottlebrush copolymers -PEG (Figure 3b; R = Me, Et, Ph, or iPr); regardless of the silyl ether monomer used, the copolymers displayed low dispersities as determined by GPC (Đ = 1.02 to 1.24 with slightly higher dispersities observed for smaller silyl ether substituents; Figure 3c). Moreover, 1H NMR analysis of the crude reaction mixtures showed high monomer conversion (Supplementary Figures 12–13), suggesting copolymer formation. Finally, acidic hydrolysis led to degradation of -PEG copolymers with no degradation of the homopolymer PEG (Figure 3d).

Figure 3.

Bifunctional silyl ether monomer scope.

a. Library of bifunctional silyl ether monomers with varied Si substituents that ultimately dictate the polymer degradation rate. b. General synthetic scheme for the synthesis of copolymers of Si and PEG-MM (Si). c. GPC traces showing the successful formation of bottlebrush copolymers using the four different silyl ether monomers and PEG-MM. d. GPC traces showing the degradation products of the four copolymers as well as PEG. The homopolymer PEG is not degradable under these conditions, while the copolymers are.

The hydrolysis kinetics of -PEG were studied as a function of pH. Key to these experiments was the high solubility of the copolymers in aqueous media (>25 mg/mL). Each sample was incubated in phosphate/citrate buffers (5 mg of copolymer / mL; pH 5.5, 6.5, or 7.4) at 37 °C; samples were taken at various time points, dried, and analyzed by GPC (see Supplementary Information, Supplementary Figure 14). Example GPC traces depicting the extent of degradation of iPrSi-PEG as a function of time at pH = 6.5 and after 35 d at various pH values are provided in Figures 4a and 4b, respectively. Notably, even at mildly acidic pH values (5.5 and 6.5) significant degradation is observed over the course of 35 d. The extent of degradation for each -PEG sample versus time in pH 5.5 buffer was quantified by integration of the corresponding GPC traces (Figure 4c); the relative extents of degradation versus time followed the expected reactivity trends of these silyl ether functional groups.[29,30] Interestingly, the copolymer peaks in the GPC traces shifted to only slightly longer retention times at early time points with the concomitant appearance of new peaks corresponding to degradation products, which suggests that the degradation begins from the more accessible bottlebrush backbone chain ends and proceeds inwardly, which agrees well with the reported regioselective reactivity of bottlebrush polymers.[31,32] Altogether, the four silyl ether monomers described here allow us to readily tune the degradation percentage of bottlebrush copolymers over four orders-of-magnitude at physiologically relevant pH values. It should be noted that although these bottlebrush copolymers degrade under aqueous conditions, they are stable for at least two months in organic solvents at room temperature (e.g., dioxane) (Supplementary Figure 15), which enables the facile synthesis and handling until they are ready to be deployed for an application of interest.

Figure 4.

Bottlebrush copolymer degradation studies as a function of time, pH, and bifunctional silyl ether composition.

a. GPC traces for iPrSi incubated at pH 6.5 for times ranging from 0 to 35 d. b. GPC traces for iPrSi incubated at pH values from 5.5 to 7.4 for 35 d. At pH 7.4, little degradation occurs within 35 d, whereas at pH 5.5 degradation to small products is complete. c. Percentage of backbone degradation as a function of time for the Si series of bottlebrush copolymers incubated at pH 5.5. The extent of degradation varies with the silyl ether substituents.

Chain transfer via backbiting represents a potential mechanism for increased dispersity and loss of molecular weight control in ROMP. To investigate the potential role of chain transfer in this system, -NB3 samples were incubated for 1 h with the chain transfer agent cis-4-octene in the presence of Grubbs 2nd-generation catalyst. The GPC traces of the samples with smaller Si substituents, MeSi-NB3 and EtSi-NB3, showed small shifts to shorter retention times, indicative of a minor decrease in molecular size (Supplementary Figure 16). The GPC traces for the samples with larger substituents, on the other hand, were essentially unchanged during the course of this experiment.[33] These results suggest that the -NB3 polymer backbones are largely resistant to chain transfer reactions, which stands in contrast to analogous copolymers of norbornene derivatives with cyclooctene.[34,35]

Application of iPrSi for Regioselective Polymer and Nanoparticle Degradation.

The ability to install degradable bonds into polynorbornene backbones could open avenues for regioselective degradation of multiblock polymers and complex macromolecular architectures. To demonstrate this concept, a DP = 100 diblock copolymer NB4--NB4) featuring one block of NB4 and a second block of statistically copolymerized NB4 and iPrSi was prepared via sequential ROMP. GPC traces of NB4--NB4) before and after acidic hydrolysis (Supplementary Figure 17) suggest that degradation only occurred in one block: a polymeric degradation product with a similar retention time to that of a control NB4 homopolymer was observed.

Applying a similar approach in the context of bottlebrush polymers, a diblock bottlebrush copolymer PEG--PS) featuring a PEG-based block and a degradable PS-based block was prepared. Acidic hydrolysis yielded a polymeric species with a nearly identical retention time to a PEG bottlebrush homopolymer and degraded fragments of the PS block (Supplementary Figure 18). Switching the location of iPrSi from the PS block to the PEG block by polymerizing PS-MM first and then a mixture of PEG-MM and iPrSi enabled selective degradation of the latter block (Supplementary Figure 18), providing proof-of-concept for regioselective degradation of blocks of choice in a multiblock bottlebrush copolymer.

The installation of degradable bonds into the block junction of a multi-block copolymer can be used to trigger interesting self-assembly behaviors.[36-38] To demonstrate this concept in the context of bottlebrush block copolymers, a triblock bottlebrush PEG--NB3)- featuring a PEG-MM, a statistical block of 1:1 iPrSi and NB4, and a block of PS-MM was prepared. A control sample, PEG-)- lacking iPrSi in the center block was also prepared. GPC analysis (Supplementary Figure 19) revealed that only the iPrSi containing copolymer degraded into two halves upon treatment with HCl. Upon dissolution of these triblock copolymers in methanol, which is a selective solvent for the PEG block, we observed that both samples formed translucent solutions indicative of assembly into larger aggregates (Supplementary Figure 19). Addition of 0.1% v/v of 2 M HCl led to precipitation of the silyl ether containing sample and not the control, presumably due to cleavage of the central block of the former releasing the PEG block and subsequent aggregation of the methanol-insoluble PS bottlebrush polymers. Though these results are preliminary, they hint at the potential of such systems for applications in self-assembly with triggered shedding of one block versus another.

Extending to star-like architectures, the crosslinking of living bottlebrush polymers with bis-norbornenes is a useful strategy for the synthesis of brush-arm star polymers (BASPs) with degradable nanogel cores.[25,39-41] To determine if silyl ether monomers could be used to impart shell degradability to BASPs, as well as distinct core and shell degradation rates, a series of living bottlebrush polymers MeSi-PEG, EtSi-PEG, and iPrSi-PEG were crosslinked with 20 equiv of bis-norbornene acetal AcXL to provide (where R = Me, Et, or iPr, respectively, Figure 5a).[39] These three BASPs had similar GPC peak shapes compared to a traditional BASP prepared using only PEG-MM and AcXL (Figure 5b). Upon treatment with trifluoroacetic acid, a strong acid, the BASP lacking silyl ethers in its shell underwent acetal core degradation to provide the corresponding PEG bottlebrush polymer products. Under the same conditions, the s yielded significantly smaller fragments due to both acetal core and -PEG shell degradation (Figure 5a and 5b).

Figure 5.

Regioselective degradation of bifunctional silyl-ether containing brush-arm star polymers (BASPs).

a. Synthesis of BASPs via crosslinking of short (DP = 7) PEG-based bottlebrush (co)polymers with AcXL. When a silyl ether monomer is combined with PEG-MM in the first step, the resulting BASPs (Si-BASP) have silyl-ether linkages (yellow) with substituents R in the backbones of their bottlebrush arms. In addition, they have acetal cores (grey) that can be independently degraded due to their different susceptibility to acid. b. GPC traces showing the successful formation of BASPs without silyl ethers (BASP, black curve) or with (Si-BASP, all other solid curves). Forcing acidic hydrolysis only cleaves the core of the BASP (lacking silyl ethers) re-generating the DP = 7 bottlebrush arms (black dashed line). In contrast, Si-BASPs undergo both core and arm degradation yielding significantly smaller fragments. *indicates residual bottlebrush (left) and PEG-MM (right) following the ROMP reaction. c. Hydrodynamic diameters of Si-BASPs as a function of time when incubated at pH 7.4. A sharp increase in hydrodynamic diameter is indicative of degradation of the silyl-ether bottlebrush shell, which exposes the hydrophobic acetal-based core that is not degradable under these mild conditions, leading to aggregation. d. Hydrodynamic diameters of Si-BASPs as a function of time when incubated at pH 5.0. As observed for the bottlebrush copolymers, the silyl ether substituents (R) dictate the extent of degradation of RSi-BASPs as a function of time at a given pH.

To assess the degradation of s under physiologically relevant conditions, solutions of these copolymers in phosphate/citrate buffers (pH 5.0 or pH 7.4) were held at room temperature; degradation as a function of time was measured by dynamic light scattering (Figure 5c, Supplementary Figure 20). The traditional BASP lacking silyl ethers showed virtually no change in its hydrodynamic diameter under these conditions, which supports previous reports that the acetal core of similar BASPs is stable under neutral and mildly acidic aqueous media.[17,39] In contrast, the s aggregated at rates that increased with pH and correlated with the silyl ether reactivity, which is attributed to degradation of the silyl-ether containing bottlebrush shell and exposure of the hydrophobic acetal core (Figure 4a). GPC analysis of the EtSi-BASP treated under these conditions confirmed that they did indeed degrade to a significant extent after 96 h at pH 5.0 (Supplementary Figure 21). Notably, the extents of degradation for s were significantly less (>10-fold) than those for the corresponding bottlebrush polymers after the same amount of time: e.g., MeSi-Brush showed almost instantaneous degradation at pH 7.4 while MeSi-BASP remained intact for 12 h. These results highlight the differences in steric shielding between small bottlebrush polymers and their larger BASP counterparts, agreeing well with previous reports on the stability of nitroxide radicals covalent attached to these polymer architectures.[40,41]

Biological Applications of Degradable Bottlebrush Copolymers

We sought to determine if the installation of silyl ethers into the backbone of PEGylated bottlebrush polymers could influence their performance as biomaterials. Cy3-labeled samples of MeSi-PEG, EtSi-PEG, iPrSi-PEG, PhSi-PEG and a control PEG lacking silyl ethers (Supplementary Figure 22) were incubated with OVCAR8 and Jurkat cells for 36 h; cell viability was assessed by flow cytometry (Supplementary Figure 23). All of the samples showed minimal cytotoxicity at the concentration tested (1 mg/mL). A noticeable increase in cell uptake was observed for the samples containing iPrSi and PhSi compared to the control sample (Supplementary Figure 24). Though the origin of this result is under investigation and does not appear to be due to differences in subcellular localization (Supplementary Figure 25), hinting at the possibility of tuning cell uptake in this system using simple copolymerization strategies.

We hypothesized that iPrSi-PEG and PhSi-PEG, which have degradation half-lives at pH 6.5 of ~6 weeks and ~2 weeks, respectively, would display early-stage biodistribution (BD) and pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles that are similar to their non-silyl ether based PEG bottlebrush polymer counterpart[12]; they may, however, show increased long-term clearance as a result of their degradability. To test this hypothesis, 5 mg of each Cy5.5-labeled version of iPrSi-PEG, PhSi-PEG and PEG (control) (Supplementary Figure 22) dissolved in 5% aqueous glucose were administered via tail-vein injection to female BALB/c mice (n = 3 for short-term PK/BD studies; n = 4 for long-term clearance studies). The mice were sacrificed at various time points and the percentage of injected dose of Cy5.5 in blood for each polymer was determined via fluorescence spectroscopy. All of the polymers showed similar and typical two-phase clearance profiles over the first 72 h (Figure 6a). In contrast, there was ~6-fold less (P < 0.01) of the silyl-ether containing bottlebrush copolymers (iPrSi-PEG and PhSi-PEG) in circulation at the three-week and six-week timepoints compared to the non-degradable control (Figure 6b). These data suggest that the installation of silyl ethers into the backbone of these polymers has little effect on their short-term PK, but significantly enhances their long-term clearance from the blood compartment.

Figure 6.

Biological studies of fluorescently labeled bottlebrush (co)polymers.

a. 72 h pharmacokinetics (PK) as determined by fluorescence analysis of blood samples. No significant differences between the silyl ether-containing bottlebrush copolymers and their homopolymer analogue were observed (n = 3 mice/timepoint, mean/S.D.). b. In contrast to short-term PK, significantly lower amounts of the silyl ether-containing bottlebrush copolymers are present in circulation after 3 weeks and 6 weeks. Statistical significance was assessed by a two-tailed Student’s t-test. (n = 3 mice/timepoint, mean/S.D.) ** - p < 0.01. c. Concentrations of bottlebrush polymers with and without silyl ether comonomers in various organs as a function of time from three days to ten weeks after injection. The silyl ether-containing bottlebrush polymers showed a lower signal in the liver and especially the spleen over the course of the experiment. Statistical significance was assessed by a two-tailed Student’s t-test. (n = 3 mice at 72 h, 4 mice at 3, 6, and 10 w, mean/S.D.) * - p < 0.05, ** - p < 0.01.

The BD of these polymers as a function of time (from 72 h to 10 weeks) was assessed by fluorescence analysis of tissue homogenates. As is often the case for PEG-based materials,[42] significant early accumulation was observed in the liver and spleen (Figure 6c, Supplementary Figures 26–27); the extent of accumulation was similar for all three polymers after 72 hours. Strikingly, after 3 weeks, significantly lower amounts of Cy5.5 fluorescence were observed in the livers (P < 0.01) and spleens (P < 0.01) of animals administered the silyl-ether containing copolymers.[43,44] After 10 weeks, the liver signals were similar for both the control and the silyl-ether bottlebrush polymers; the latter, however, continued to show much lower splenic accumulation (P < 0.01). Blood chemistry (Supplementary Figure 28) as well as liver, spleen, and kidney histopathology (Supplementary Figure 29) revealed mild hyperglycemia but otherwise no discernable toxicities for the control bottlebrush and its silyl-ether analogues. Though the mechanisms of degradation for biomaterials in vivo can be complicated, and other factors in addition to degradability such as differential cell uptake and/or protein corona formation may explain the observed differences in in vivo behaviors for these bottlebrush copolymers, these proof-of-principle results hint at the potential for using silyl ether monomers to tune the in vivo PK and BD of biocompatible ROMP-based copolymers.

Conclusions

In summary, we report that 8-membered cyclic silyl-ether-based olefins copolymerize efficiently with a wide variety of norbornene-based (macro)monomers via ROMP rendering these widely used polymers degradable. By tuning the silyl ether substituents, the extent of degradation as a function of time can be tuned over several orders of magnitude with minimal impact on copolymerization control. Proofs-of-principle for how this approach can enable regioselective degradation of multi-block bottlebrush and BASP macromolecular architectures are provided. In addition, the impact of degradability on the in vitro and in vivo biological performance of PEG-based bottlebrush copolymers is assessed, showing that these monomers can be used to enhance long-term tissue clearance. These results will enable applications of ROMP-derived polymers in triggered self-assembly, stimuli-responsive materials, sustainability, and biomedicine.