Recent Research Developments

Micelles are widely touted as possible storage and delivery vehicles for a range of insoluble, active molecules, such as pharmaceuticals, gene therapy agents, and pesticides. More recently it has been recognized that, if a micelle were constructed with a subdivided core, different molecules could be solubilized in the two (or more) core compartments. This would enable simultaneous delivery, in prescribed stoichiometric proportions, of two molecules that might be otherwise incompatible (i.e., an acid and a base). April Rasdal, a UROP undergraduate student, and Zhibo Li, a graduate student working jointly with Tim Lodge and Marc Hillmyer, have just reported the first demonstration of the simultaneous uptake of two chomophores into separate micellar compartments (J. Am. Chem. Soc., ASAP, November 22, 2005). The micelles were prepared in water from "mikto-arm" star terpolymers "EOF", where the three star arms were water-soluble poly(ethylene oxide) ("O"), hydrophobic poly(ethyl ethylene) ("E"), and lipo- and hydrophobic poly(perfluoropropylene oxide) ("F"), respectively. Pyrene was taken up exclusively in the hydrocarbon core compartments, whereas a fluorinated naphthalene derivative (NFH) was taken up preferentially in the fluorocarbon nanodomains. The solubilization was quantified by UV-vis spectrophotometry.



Schematic illustration of selective storage of dye molecules in different micelle solutions

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