Design of stimuli-responsive dendrimers

Abstract

Importance of the field: Dendrimers are synthetic macromolecules with well-defined structures, many terminal functional groups, and an inner space to hold small molecules. These properties make them potential drug carriers. Recently, stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems have become attractive because of the reduction of side effects and maximum expression of drug action.

Areas covered in this review: This paper reviews dendrimer nanoparticles that are sensitive to temperature, light, pH and redox state.

What the reader will gain: Strategies to design these dendritic polymers are provided in this review.

Take home message: By adding stimuli-responsive properties to the dendrimers, dendritic polymers capable of controlled release can be produced. These stimuli-responsive dendrimers are a potential next generation drug carrier.

Keywords::

• dendrimer
• photo-sensitive
• pH-sensitive
• redox-sensitive
• temperature-sensitive

Acknowledgments

The author thanks E Nishisaka and Y Umeda for their useful discussions on pH-sensitive and photosensitive dendrimers, and N Tano for her secretarial work and help with preparing the figures.

Notes

This box summarises key points contained in the article.