Agradecimentos: This study was funded by the "Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico" – CNPq (Grant number 203430/2020-4), China Scholarship Council (CSC202008300001), and the Irish Research Council (IRC) Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship (GOIPD/2022/209). The authors are also grateful to Yinghao Li, University College Dublin, for his valuable comments and advice on this work Ver menos

Abstract: Recently, an extensive research effort has been directed toward the improvement of nonviral transfection vectors, such as polymeric materials. The macromolecular structure of polymers has a substantial effect on their transfection efficacy. In this context, the modern advances in polymer production techniques, such as the deactivation-enhanced radical atom transfer polymerization (DE-ATRP), have been fundamental for the synthesis of controlled architecture nanomaterials. In this study, hyperbranched poly(ß-pinene)-PDMAEMA-PEGDMA nanometric copolymers were synthesised at high conversion via DE-ATRP using different concentrations of ß-pinene for gene delivery applications. The structural characterization and the biological performance of the materials were investigated. The copolymers' molar mass (10,434-16,438 mol l-1), dispersity, and conversion (90-95%) varied significantly with ß-pinene proportion on the polymerizations. The polymer-gene complexes generated (280-110 nm) presented excellent solution stability due to the ß-pinene segment on the copolymers. Gene delivery and transfection were highly dependent on the copolymer composition. The copolymers containing the highest ß-pinene proportions exhibited the best results with high transfection effectivity. In conclusion, the incorporation of ß-pinene in DMAEMA-PEGMA copolymer formulations is a renewable option to improve the materials' branching ratio, polyplex stability, and gene delivery performance without causing cytotoxic effects Ver menos