Recent Research Progress on Polyamidoamine-Engineered Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

Hydrogels are three-dimensional crosslinked functional materials with water-absorbing and swelling properties. Many hydrogels can store a variety of small functional molecules to structurally and functionally mimic the natural extracellular matrix; hence, they have been extensively studied for biomedical applications. Polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers have an ethylenediamine core and a large number of peripheral amino groups, which can be used to engineer various polymer hydrogels. In this review, an update on the progress of using PAMAM dendrimers for multifunctional hydrogel design was given. The synthesis of these hydrogels, which includes click chemistry reactions, aza-Michael addition, Schiff base reactions, amidation reactions, enzymatic reactions, and radical polymerization, together with research progress in terms of their application in the fields of drug delivery, tissue engineering, drug-free tumor therapy, and other related fields, was discussed in detail. Furthermore, the biomedical applications of PAMAM-engineered nano-hydrogels, which combine the advantages of dendrimers, hydrogels, and nanoparticles, were also summarized. This review will help researchers to design and develop more functional hydrogel materials based on PAMAM dendrimers.

Thermo-/pH-Dual-Sensitive PEG/PAMAM Nanogel: Reaction Dynamics and Plugging Application of CO2 Channeling

Smart hydrogels, owing to their exceptional viscoelastic and deformable capacity in response to environmental stimulation involving temperature and pH, have been successfully applied in oilfields for purposes such as water and/or gas shutoff treatments. However, the CO₂ breakthrough problem in low permeability reservoirs has not been well solved. In this work, a rheological method-based Avrami dynamics model and Dickinson dynamics model were employed to investigate the dynamic gelation process of thermo-/pH-dual-sensitive PEG/PAMAM nanogels to further our understanding of the microstructure of their gelation and pertinence plugging application. Plugging experiments were performed by alternating injections of CO₂ and hydrogel solution in a slug type on three fractured low permeability cores with a backpressure of 13 MPa. The nanogels presented a secondary growth pattern from three to one dimension from micrometer to nanometer size with a morphological transformation from a sphere to an irregular ellipsoid or disk shape. The phase transition temperature was 50 °C, and the phase transition pH was 10. If both or either were below these values, the hydrogel swelled; otherwise, it shrank. Plugging results show that the plugging efficiency was higher than 99%. The maximum breakthrough pressure was 19.93 MPa, and the corresponding residual pressure remained 17.64 MPa for a 10 mD core, exhibiting great plugging performance and high residual resistance after being broken through by CO₂.

Dendrimer as a momentous tool in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Dendrimers have been comprehensively used for cargo delivery, nucleic acid delivery (genes, miRNA/siRNAs), delivery of macromolecules, and other various biomedical applications. Dendrimers are highly versatile in function and can be engineered as multifunctional biomacromolecules by modifying the surface for fulfilling different applications. Dendrimers are being used for crosslinking of existing synthetic and natural polymeric scaffolds to regulate their binding efficiency, stiffness, biocompatibility, transfection, and many other properties to mimic the in vivo extracellular matrix in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM). Dendritic inter-cellular linkers can enhance the linkages between cells and result in scaffold-independent tissue constructs. Effectively engineered dendrimers are the ideal molecules for delivering bioactive molecules such as cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, etc., and other metabolites for efficaciously regulating cell behavior. Dendrimeric nanostructures have shown tremendous results in various TERM fields like stem cells survival, osteogenesis, increased crosslinking for eye and corneal repair, and proliferation in cartilage. This review highlights the role and various aspects of dendritic polymers for TERM in general and with respect to specific tissues. This review also covers novel explorations and insights into the use of dendrimers in TERM, focusing on the developments in the past decade and perspective of the future.

Preparation and swelling behavior of end-linked hydrogels prepared from linear poly(ethylene glycol) and dendrimer-star polymers

Linear diepoxide-terminated poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) of molar mass 600, 1000 and 2000 g mol−1 was end-linked with dendrimer-star polymer (PAMAM) of generations 1.0 in water to prepare architecturally well-defined copolymer hydrogels. The structures and properties of the products were characterized using infrared, 1H NMR, DSC measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and swelling behavior tests. The swelling behavior of these hydrogels was tested in distilled water at constant temperature and the equilibrium swelling ratio (ESR) was determined for structurally different hydrogels and various environmental conditions, which showed that ESR was influenced by the molecular weight of PEG, the molar ratio of H amine groups/epoxy groups, temperature and pH. Higher ESR was obtained for either longer-chain PEG, non-stoichiometric H amine/epoxy groups ratio, acidic pH or lower temperatures. When the hydrogel was switched from 10 °C to 65 °C and pH 3.5 to 11.5, the swelling behavior of the hydrogels showed good reversibility for swelling–deswelling. When the molecular weight of PEG was changed in the range of 600–2000, the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of hydrogel increased from 30 to 40 °C. When the molar ratio of H amine/epoxy groups was changed, the LCST was not significantly changed.