Cationic Star Polymers Obtained by the Arm-First ApproachInfluence\nof Arm Number and Positioning of Cationic Units on Antimicrobial Activity

Recently, we published\na study demonstrating the promising structure–activity\nrelationship of 4-arm star polymers toward bacterial cells and biofilms.\nThe aim of this study was to increase the number of arms to determine\nif this could further enhance activity via the arm-first approach,\nwhich enables access to star structures with a higher number of arms.\nA library of amphiphilic diblock and miktoarm star polymers was successfully\nsynthesized, and their biological properties were assessed. The increased\nnumber of arms failed to increase activity for the diblock stars,\npossibly due to shielding of the cationic units located at the core\nfrom binding to the membrane, which was slightly improved for the\nmiktoarm structures. However, the efficient synthesis of these structures\nshown herein could be used to synthesize star polymers with a higher\ncationic ratio or longer arms, thereby circumventing the limitation\nof reduced interaction of cationic units with the membrane.