Glucosamine-conjugated Anionic Poly(amidoamine) Dendrimers Inhibit Interleukin-8 Production byHelicobacter pyloriin Gastric Epithelial Cells

Dendrimers as Pharmaceutical Excipients: Synthesis, Properties, Toxicity and Biomedical Applications

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) in the United States of America, define excipient as the constituents of the pharmaceutical form other than the active ingredient, i.e., any component that is intended to furnish pharmacological activity. Although dendrimers do not have a pharmacopoeia monograph and, therefore, cannot be recognized as a pharmaceutical excipient, these nanostructures have received enormous attention from researchers. Due to their unique properties, like the nanoscale uniform size, a high degree of branching, polyvalency, aqueous solubility, internal cavities, and biocompatibility, dendrimers are ideal as active excipients, enhancing the solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs. The fact that the dendrimer's properties are controllable during their synthesis render them promising agents for drug-delivery applications in several pharmaceutical formulations. Additionally, dendrimers can be used for reducing the drug toxicity and for the enhancement of the drug efficacy. This review aims to discuss the properties that turn dendrimers into pharmaceutical excipients and their potential applications in the pharmaceutical and biomedical fields.

Advances in drug delivery, gene delivery and therapeutic agents based on dendritic materials

Dendrimers are synthetic polymers that grow in three dimensions into well-defined structures. Their morphological appearance resembles a number of trees connected by a common point. Dendritic nanoparticles have been studied for a large number of pharmaceutical and biomedical applications including gene and drug delivery, clinical diagnosis and MRI. Despite the application of dendrimers, research is still in its childhood in comparison with liposomes and other nanomaterials. They are now playing a key role in several therapeutic strategies, with dendrimer-based products in clinical trials. The aim of this review is to describe the state-of-the-art of biomedical applications of dendrimers – and dendrimer conjugates – such as drug and gene delivery and antiviral activity.

Recent progress in dendrimer-based nanomedicine development

Dendrimers offer well-defined nanoarchitectures with spherical shape, high degree of molecular uniformity, and multiple surface functionalities. Such unique structural properties of dendrimers have created many applications for drug and gene delivery, nanomedicine, diagnostics, and biomedical engineering. Dendrimers are not only capable of delivering drugs or diagnostic agents to desired sites by encapsulating or conjugating them to the periphery, but also have therapeutic efficacy in their own. When compared to traditional polymers for drug delivery, dendrimers have distinct advantages, such as high drug-loading capacity at the surface terminal for conjugation or interior space for encapsulation, size control with well-defined numbers of peripheries, and multivalency for conjugation to drugs, targeting moieties, molecular sensors, and biopolymers. This review focuses on recent applications of dendrimers for the development of dendrimer-based nanomedicines for cancer, inflammation, and viral infection. Although dendrimer-based nanomedicines still face some challenges including scale-up production and well-characterization, several dendrimer-based drug candidates are expected to enter clinical development phase in the near future.