Tuning the molecular weight of polymeric amphiphiles as a tool to access micelles with a wide range of enzymatic degradation rates

Enyzme-responsive polymeric assemblies hold great potential for biomedical applications due to the over-expression of disease-associated enzymes, which can be utilized to activate such systems only in afflicted tissues. Herein we demonstrate that the overall molecular weight of polymeric amphiphiles, which have the same hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratio, can be tuned to create polymeric micelles with an extreme range of degradation rates. This approach expands the available set of molecular parameters that can be adjusted to tune the degradation rate of polymeric assemblies, paving new possibilities for rational design of polymeric systems with controlled degradation rates.