Thanks to their wide range of biological activities, peptides have been extensively used to afford designed materials with tailored properties. Peptides can be associated to polymers combining the properties of various polymer backbones with those of bioactive peptide sequences. Such conjugates find promising applications in medical devices, tissue engineering, drug targeting and delivery. Improvement of existing polymers by post-modification peptide grafting is achieved through an extensive range of organic reactions, involving the prior preparation of functional polymers displaying suitable anchoring functions. Alternatively, peptides can be used as initiators of polymerization yielding a chimeric molecule bearing a single peptide at the end of macromolecular chains. Finally, novel polymer materials can be designed when the peptide itself is used as a macromonomer. In that case, the unmatched level of repetition of the peptide sequence or/and its self-assembly properties allow to access very high functionalization degree, original structures and bioactivities.

由于其广泛的生物活性，肽已被广泛用于提供具有定制特性的设计材料。可以将肽与聚合物结合，从而将各种聚合物主链的特性与生物活性肽序列的特性结合在一起。此类缀合物在医疗设备，组织工程，药物靶向和递送中发现有希望的应用。通过后修饰的肽接枝来改进现有聚合物是通过广泛的有机反应实现的，涉及预先制备的具有合适锚固功能的功能聚合物。或者，可以将肽用作聚合引发剂，从而产生在大分子链末端带有单个肽的嵌合分子。最后，当肽本身用作大分子单体时，可以设计出新颖的聚合物材料。在那种情况下，肽序列的重复水平的无与伦比的水平或/和它的自组装特性允许获得非常高的功能化程度，原始结构和生物活性。