Proteins are one of the most appropriate biomaterials for a variety of biomedical applications including resorbable surgical and pharmaceutical devices owing to their innate affinity to tissues, enzymatic biodegradability with releasing “the bricks of life” - α-amino acids (α-AAs) which could be assimilated by the organism promoting in that way tissue regeneration. However, the proteins have some serious shortcomings among which the most important is immunogenicity that is attributed to their molecular architecture.
More promising are α-AA based synthetic biodegradable (AABB) polymers having a new macromolecular architecture less recognizable by the immune system of the living organism. The presentation deals with an overview of the main families of the α-AA based synthetic polymers such as poly(amino acid)s, pseudo-poly(amino acid)s, polydepsipeptides, and provides somewhat more expanded information about the fourth class - so-called pseudo-proteins^1-4 which represent relatively new and broad family of the biodegradable polymers qualified for numerous biomedical applications^5-9, including nano-vehicles for targeted drug delivery¹⁰. A new class of pseudo-proteins composed of non-proteinogenic amino acids were obtained as well¹¹. These new polymers are expected to have as wide range of biological activities.