Direct force measurements between adlayers consisting of poly(amidoamine) dendrimers with primary amino groups or quaternary ammonium groups

Uptake, efflux, and mass transfer coefficient of fluorescent PAMAM dendrimers into pancreatic cancer cells

Targeted delivery of imaging agents to cells can be optimized with the understanding of uptake and efflux rates. Cellular uptake of macromolecules is studied frequently with fluorescent probes. We hypothesized that the internalization and efflux of fluorescently labeled macromolecules into and out of mammalian cells could be quantified by confocal microscopy to determine the rate of uptake and efflux, from which the mass transfer coefficient is calculated. The cellular influx and efflux of a third generation poly(amido amine) (PAMAM) dendrimer labeled with an Alexa Fluor 555 dye was measured in Capan-1 pancreatic cancer cells using confocal fluorescence microscopy. The Capan-1 cells were also labeled with 5-chloromethylfluorescein diacetate (CMFDA) green cell tracker dye to delineate cellular boundaries. A dilution curve of the fluorescently labeled PAMAM dendrimer enabled quantification of the concentration of dendrimer in the cell. A simple mass transfer model described the uptake and efflux behavior of the PAMAM dendrimer. The effective mass transfer coefficient was found to be 0.054±0.043μm/min, which corresponds to a rate constant of 0.035±0.023min(-1) for uptake of the PAMAM dendrimer into the Capan-1 cells. The effective mass transfer coefficient was shown to predict the efflux behavior of the PAMAM dendrimer from the cell if the fraction of labeled dendrimer undergoing non-specific binding is accounted for. This work introduces a novel method to quantify the mass transfer behavior of fluorescently labeled macromolecules into mammalian cells.

Interaction forces between poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers adsorbed on gold surfaces

Interaction forces between two gold surfaces with adsorbed poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers (generations G3.0 and G5.0) have been investigated using colloidal probe atomic force microscopy (AFM). In the absence of dendrimers or at their low concentrations, an attractive force derived from the van der Waals interaction was observed. On the other hand, this attractive interaction changed to repulsion with increasing dendrimer concentration. The origin of the repulsion can be attributed to either an electric double layer interaction or a steric effect of the adsorbed dendrimers, depending on the concentration of dendrimer. The steric hindrance was also influenced by the generation of the dendrimer; the force-detectable distance in the presence of PAMAM G5.0 dendrimer was slightly longer than that in the presence of G3.0 dendrimer. In order to estimate the occupied area of each dendrimer adsorbed on gold, quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) measurement was also carried out.