TY - JOUR A1 - Brosnan, Sarah M. A1 - Schlaad, Helmut A1 - Antonietti, Markus T1 - Aqueous Self-Assembly of Purely Hydrophilic Block Copolymers into Giant Vesicles JF - Angewandte Chemie : a journal of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker ; International edition N2 - Self-assembly of macromolecules is fundamental to life itself, and historically, these systems have been primitively mimicked by the development of amphiphilic systems, driven by the hydrophobic effect. Herein, we demonstrate that self-assembly of purely hydrophilic systems can be readily achieved with similar ease and success. We have synthesized double hydrophilic block copolymers from polysaccharides and poly(ethylene oxide) or poly(sarcosine) to yield high molar mass diblock copolymers through oxime chemistry. These hydrophilic materials can easily assemble into nanosized (<500nm) and microsized (>5m) polymeric vesicles depending on concentration and diblock composition. Because of the solely hydrophilic nature of these materials, we expect them to be extraordinarily water permeable systems that would be well suited for use as cellular mimics. KW - block copolymers KW - polymersomes KW - polysaccharides KW - self-assembly KW - vesicles Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201502100 SN - 1433-7851 SN - 1521-3773 VL - 54 IS - 33 SP - 9715 EP - 9718 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER -