Figure 5:

Schematic overview of the concept of drug-free macromolecular therapeutics. This concept has been demonstrated for motifs derived from both oligonucleotide hybridization and coiled-coil peptide association. A cancer cell of interest was first pre-targeted with a reagent for biological recognition, an antibody or antibody fragment, that was modified with one-half of the desired recognition motif. Subsequently, a multivalent polymer bearing the complementary recognition motif was administered. The polymer scaffold, by simultaneously binding multiple surface-presented motifs, serves to non-covalently link the receptors on the cell leading to triggered cell death.