Disulfide has been the only widely used functionality to serve as a reduction responsive trigger in drug delivery. We introduce thioester as a novel thiol responsive chemistry for drug delivery, whose reactivity can be conveniently modulated by choosing the appropriate steric environment around the thioester. Compared with disulfides, thioesters are facile to synthesize and have an order of magnitude broader kinetic tunability. A novel traceless reversible protein PEGylation reagent is developed based on thioester chemistry.