Dendrimer—drug conjugates

Drugs are encapsulated in dendrimers primarily using two methods by covalent dendrimer-drug conjugation or non-covalent encapsulation of drugs. 

Kurtoglu, Y, Mishra, M., Kannan, S., Kannan, R. Drug release characteristics of PAMAM dendrimer-drug conjugates with different linkers. Int. J. Pharm. 2010, 384 (1-2), 189-194. 

Menjoge, A. R. Navath, R. S. Asad, A. Kaiman, S. Kim, C. J. Romero, R. Kannan, R. M. Transport and hiodistrihution of dendrimers across human fetal membranes ImpUcations for intravaginal administration of dendrimer-drug conjugates. Biomaterials 2010,31,5007-5021. 

Navath, R. S., Kurtoglu, Y. E., Wang, B., Kannan, S., Romero, R., and Kannan, R. M. 2008. Dendrimer-drug conjugates for tailored intracellular drug release based on glutathione levels. Bioconjug Chem 19(12), 2446-2455. 

Figure 5.29. PAMAM dendrimer multifunctional conjugates for cancer treatment. The FA group is a folic acid cancer cell target, and FITC is fluorescein isothiocyanate, used as an imaging agent. Also shown (bottom) is the molecular structure for the anticancer drug, taxol, denoting the -OH group that covalently attaches to the dendrimer. Reproduced with permission from Majoros, I. J. Myc, A. Thomas, T Mehta, C. Baker, J. R. Biomacromolecules, 2006, 7, 572. Copyright 2006 American Chemical Society.

A number of studies have examined the use of a dendrimer drug carrier to treat a variety of tumors. One approach has been based on the exploitation of the enhanced permeability and retention effect (EPR effect) to localize drug conjugates in tumor tissue. " A second approach has involved the conjugation of a... 

Nanoscale Dendrimer-Platinum Conjugates as Multivalent Antitumor Drugs... 

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