Preparation and applications of artificial mucins in biomedicine

Mucus is an essential barrier material that separates organisms from the outside world. This slippery material regulates the transport of nutrients, drugs, gases, and pathogens toward the cell surface. The surface of the cell itself is coated in a mucus-like barrier of glycoproteins and glycolipids. Mucin glycoproteins are the primary component of mucus and the epithelial glycocalyx. Aberrant mucin production is implicated in diverse disease states from cancer and inflammation to pre-term birth and infection. Biological mucins are inherently heterogenous in structure, which has challenged understanding their molecular functions as a barrier and as biochemically active proteins. Therefore, many synthetic materials have been developed as artificial mucins with precisely tunable structures. This review highlights advances in design and synthesis of artificial mucins and their application in biomedical studies of mucin chemistry, biology, and physics.