Dendrimers: General Aspects, Applications and Structural Exploitations as Prodrug/Drug-delivery Vehicles in Current Medicine

Abstract

Dendrimers are hyper branched macro molecules with well-defined structure and high degree of functionality on the surface. The dendrimer architecture allows control over properties such as shape, size, density, polarity, reactivity, solubility etc. These special features can be exploited to design molecules having desired properties used for biomedical applications. Recent advancements in correlation between structure and biodegradability and in vivo performance are opening up new avenues for these molecules; particularly, in biological applications like drug delivery. The unique structure of dendrimers provides enough attachment sites for drugs. Further, it is possible to tune the molecules in such a way so that the drug molecules are encapsulated outside the target area and are released only in the local environment of targets. This review presents some general aspects of dendrimers and how their properties are exploited for drug delivery applications.

Keywords: Biomedical applications; conjugation; dendrimer; drug delivery systems; encapsulation; pharmaceutical; prodrug..