Rapid fabrication of versatile zwitterionic super-hydrophilic polymers by sole-monomer system for biomolecules separation

Abstract Zwitterionic super-hydrophilic polymers showed fascinating prospects because of their excellent biocompatibility, and antifouling characteristics. However, their commercial development and the application in different fields were limited by their tedious preparation process, unsatisfactory reproducibility and performance. In this study, a rapid fabrication approach based on a sole-monomer system (2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl-[N-(2-methacryloyloxy)ethyl]phosphorylcholine (MMPC) was simultaneously employed as monomer and crosslinker) was proposed for preparing the cell membrane biomimetic polymers within only 1 h, which is significantly faster than the conventional multi-monomers based approach (∼12 h). Furthermore, the proposed strategy turns out to be very simple, time saving and reproducible. The super-hydrophilicity, excellent separation efficiency, biocompatibility and antifouling ability were also achieved on the resulting biomimetic polymers. It is worth noting that the versatile biomimetic polymers exhibited excellent enrichment capacity for N-glycopeptides or C-reactive protein (CRP) from complex biological matrices as well as great separation performance for small bioactive molecules although the PC analogous moiety is located in the middle of the MMPC molecule. In particular, a quite similar binding mode exists between the MMPC dimer and the natural PC ligands to CRP. Therefore, the sole-monomer system can not only simplify the preparation process and improve the reproducibility of the zwitterionic materials, but also combine the advantages of the biomimetic cell membrane surface and the zwitterionic super-hydrophilic polymers for the separation of biomolecules in complex biological fluids.