可在水相中催化的有机金属催化剂已成为化学研究中的重要方向之一，以此为基础的细胞内催化反应更是药物化学家和生物化学家手中的得力工具。然而，金属有机催化剂的生物毒性、水溶性和环境敏感性一直是其生物应用中的重要难题，目前能在生物相关环境下进行催化的有机金属催化剂寥寥无几。由此，本项目力图建立一个以聚甘油-聚降冰片烯为基础的大分子催化剂体系，研究大分子骨架对金属催化中心活性的提升作用与可能机理。该大分子催化剂可搭载不同的金属有机催化中心，提供多羟基亲水的外部结构和多空腔疏水的内部结构，以利于大分子抓取疏水小分子底物到内部与催化中心结合，高效催化反应并释放产物。同时，项目也将尝试调整大分子结构使其更容易为细胞所摄取，令金属催化中心在大分子骨架的帮助下可在细胞内高效催化一类反应甚至是多步级联反应，从而为化学生物学研究增添新的易用工具。

The development of metal-organic or organometallic catalysts to perform organic reactions in aqueous environment represents an important area of chemical research. Intracellular catalysis using such catalysts can provide versatile tools for medicinal chemists and chemical biologists. However, the biocompatibility, water solubility and environment sensitivity of metal-organic and organometallic catalysts have been significant obstacles preventing their applications in chemical biology. There are only few candidates that can perform catalysis in biology-relevant environments. Thus, this proposal aims at a new polymeric approach based on polyglycerol-polynorbornene scaffolds with active metal centers, exploring the improvements on catalyst activity brought by the macromolecular scaffolds and the related mechanisms. The proposed polymeric scaffold can load different metal centers, providing a multi-hydroxyl, hydrophilic exterior and a porous, hydrophobic interior, facilitating the uptake of small molecular substrates into the scaffold, catalyzing the reaction and releasing the products. Meanwhile, the structure of the macromolecular scaffold can be adjusted to facilitate cell uptake, making the metal centers able to perform catalysis inside cells with the aid of the polymeric skeleton, realizing series of intracellular reactions or even cascade reactions, which will likely become new, useful tools for chemical biology research.