Polyethylene glycol (PEG) coatings can be functionalized without prior chemical modification, according to Daniela Wilson and colleagues from the Radboud University Nijmegen in Nature Chemistry.  

In biomedical applications, polyethylene glycol (PEG) coatings are often used, for example as an anti-bacterial layer on medical implants or as a ‘camouflage’ for drugs. After all, PEG is considered chemically inert and, normally, nothing sticks to it.  

The idea of Daniela Wilson, professor of systems chemistry at Radboud University Nijmegen, consists of providing functional groups with an ‘anchor’ that can position itself between the PEG-chains and subsequently can stay there due to vanderwaals forces. In an accompanying community blog on their Nature Chemistry publication, Wilson and first author Shaohua Zhang explain that in doing so they are actually mimicking the non-covalent mechanism that cell membranes use to bind surface proteins.