α-Lipoic acid: from a mitochondrial cofactor to a versatile platform for dynamic biomaterials and translational biomedicine.
α-Lipoic acid (LA) is a naturally occurring small molecule possessing both endogenous cofactor activity and dynamic covalent polymerization capability. The 1,2-dithiolane ring in its structure enables both redox-responsive biological functions and ring-opening polymerization to yield polylipoic acid (PolyLA) with a dyn...