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Lightly cross-linked polyelectrolyte microgels are materials with interesting properties for a range of applications. For instance, the volume of these particles can be drastically changed in response to pH, ionic strength, temperature, or the concentration of specific ions and metabolites. In addition, microgel particles can bind substantial amounts of oppositely charged substances, such as proteins and peptides, and release them upon changes in the external environment. Consequently, microgels have potential in catalysis, photonics, biomaterials, and not at least, as protective and stimuli-sensitive carriers for protein and peptide drugs.

In this thesis, the interaction between anionic microgels and cationic peptides was investigated by monitoring microgel deswelling and reswelling in response to peptide binding and release using micromanipulator-assisted light microscopy. In addition, peptide distribution in microgels was analyzed with confocal laser scanning microscopy and peptide uptake determined with solution depletion measurements. The aim of the thesis was to clarify how parameters such as peptide size, charge density, pH, ionic strength and hydrophobicity influences the peptide binding to, distribution in and release from, polyelectrolyte microgels.

Results obtained in this thesis show that electrostatic attraction is a prerequisite for interaction to occur although non-electrostatic contributions are responsible the finer details of the interactions. The size and charge density of the interacting peptides play a major role, as large and highly charged peptides are restricted to enter and interact with the microgel core, thus displaying a surface-confined distribution. The peptide-microgel interaction strength is highly reflected in the probability of peptides to be detached from the gel network. For instance, reducing the electrostatic interactions by adding salt induces significant peptide release of sufficiently small and moderately charged peptides, whereas longer and more highly charged peptides is retained in the microgel network due to the strong interaction, insufficient salt screening, and gel network pore size restriction. Decreasing the charge density of microgel network and/or peptides increases the probability for peptide detachment tremendously.

To summarize, interactions occurring in oppositely charged microgel-peptide systems can be tuned by varying parameters such as charge density and peptide size and through this, the peptide uptake, distribution and release can be controlled to alter the performance of microgels in peptide drug delivery.