Polymer stabilized lipid nanodiscs offer enormous potential as tools for enabling membrane protein structural studies & biophysics. Previously we studied nanodisc formation using a poly(styrene-alt-maleic acid) copolymer, which forms discs above pH 8, and also using a commercially available poly(styrene-alt-maleimide) (PSMI) which forms discs at pH 6. We now wish to study the polymer chemistry in more detail to investigate the effect of structural changes to help determine how the disc structure is stabilized. We have synthesised well-defined precursor poly(styrene-alt-maleic anhydride) and converted this to PSMI with different amine lengths, to alter the size of the hydrophilic part of the polymer, and also made similar polymers using 4-methylstyrene to increase the size of the hydrophobic part. We propose to study the detailed structure of lipid nanodiscs prepared using these polymers.