ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the history and the trends of dendrimer application for drug and gene delivery systems. Poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimer-based GdIII chelates were synthesized for use as a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent. MRI is a powerful technique in medical diagnostics and used to visualize organs and blood vessels. The dendrimer chelates showed excellent MRI images and long blood circulation times in in vivo experiments. Also, chemically modified polylysine dendrimers and other dendrimers were synthesized for useful antiviral or antibacterial drugs. In addition, numerous dendrimeric glycans or glycosylated dendrimers were shown to efficiently interact with natural carbohydrates receptors and were focused in their potential as microbial anti-adhesins, microbial toxin antagonists, and anti-cancer drugs. Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-attached PAMAM dendrimers could encapsulate anti-cancer drugs, adriamycin, and methotrexate, and their ability to encapsulate these drugs increased with the increasing dendrimer generation and chain length of PEG grafts.
