Miroslav Stepanek

Biguanide-based cationic polyelectrolytes are used as key components of interpolyelectrolyte complexes bolstering alginate hydrogel microcapsules employed in cell therapies. Nevertheless, electrostatic complexation of these unique polycations has not been studied...

Aqueous solutions of a thermoresponsive diblock copolymer poly(di-[ethylene glycol] methyl ether methacrylate)--poly(2-[diisopropylamino] ethyl methacrylate) (PDEGMA--PDIPAEMA) were studied by static, dynamic and electrophoretic light scattering, small-angle X-ray scattering and differential scanning...

Electrostatic interactions between charged macromolecules are ubiquitous in biological systems, and they are important also in materials design. Attraction between oppositely charged molecules is often interpreted as if the molecules...

Stimuli-responsive copolymers are of great interest for targeted drug delivery. This study reports on a controllable post-polymerization quaternization with 2-bromomethyl-4-fluorophenylboronic acid of the poly(4-vinyl pyridine) (P4VP) block of a common...

We developed acid-functionalized glycogen conjugates as supramolecular carriers for efficient encapsulation and inhibition of a model cationic peptide melittin─the main component of honeybee venom. For this purpose, we synthesized and...

In recent experiments, the "local pH" near polyelectrolyte chains was determined from the shift in the effective acidity constant of fluorescent pH indicators attached to the macromolecules. This indirect determination...

This review article is addressed to a broad community of polymer scientists. We outline and analyse the fundamentals of the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation method from the point of...

Hydrophobic blocks of amphiphilic block copolymers often form glassy micellar cores at room temperature with a rigid structure that limits their applications as nanocapsules for targeted delivery. Nevertheless, we prepared...

Peptides containing amino acids with ionisable side chains represent a typical example of weak ampholytes, that is, molecules with multiple titratable acid and base groups, which generally exhibit charge regulating...

Herein, poly[quaternized 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate--lauryl methacrylate--(oligo ethylene glycol)methacrylate] (QPDMAEMA--PLMA--POEGMA) cationic amphiphilic triblock terpolymers were used as vehicles for the complexation/encapsulation of insulin (INS). The terpolymers self-assemble in spherical micelles with PLMA...