2. Design and Activity of Cationic Amphiphilic Antimicrobial Polymers
2.1. Design and Synthesis of Antimicrobial Methacrylate Copolymers
Based on the peptide-mimetic design, we have been interested in developing antimicrobial polymers using conventional polymer platform of methacrylate, which have no intrinsic secondary structures like peptides. We synthesized poly(methacrylate)s bearing cationic and hydrophobic groups in the side chains, which are randomly distributed in a polymer chain (Figure 2).[21] These methacrylate random copolymers hav