Hybrid giant lipid vesicles incorporating a PMMA-based copolymer

Background:In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the formation of copolymer-lipid hybrid self-assemblies, which allow combining and improving the main features of pure lipid-based and copolymer-basedsystems known for their potential applications in the biomedicalfield. As the most common method used toobtain giant vesicles is electroformation, most systems so far used low Tgpolymers for theirflexibility at roomtemperature.Methods:Copolymers used in the hybrid vesicles have been synthesized by a modified version of the ATRP,namely the Activators ReGenerated by Electron Transfer ATRP and characterized by NMR and DSC. Giant hybridvesicles have been obtained using electroformation and droplet transfer method. Confocalfluorescence micro-scopy was used to image the vesicles.Results:Electroformation enabled to obtain hybrid vesicles in a narrow range of compositions (15 mol% was themaximum copolymer content). This range could be extended by the use of a droplet transfer method, whichenabled obtaining hybrid vesicles incorporating a methacrylate-based polymer in a wide range of compositions.Proof of the hybrid composition was obtained byfluorescence microscopy using labeled lipids and copolymers.Conclusions:This work describes for thefirst time, to the best of our knowledge, the formation of giant hybridpolymer/lipid vesicles formed with such a content of a polymethylmethacrylate copolymer, the glass tem-perature of which is above room temperature.General significance:This work shows that polymer structures, more complex than the ones mostly employed,can be possibly included in giant hybrid vesicles by using the droplet transfer method. This will give easier accessto functionalized and stimuli-responsive giant vesicles and to systems exhibiting a tunable permeability, thesesystems being relevant for biological and technological applications.