ABSTRACT
Nanomaterials have emerged from academic curiosity and are being applied in many diverse areas such as information technology and biotechnology. This chapter focuses on the structural aspects of dendritic molecules that have been used to design efficient and multifunctional drug delivery vehicles in cancer therapy with the help of selected illustrative examples. The term dendrimer–drug conjugate is mainly applied when a drug molecule is covalently linked to a dendrimer. Poly(amidoamine) dendrimers have been widely used for preparation of dendrimer–drug conjugates because of easily modifiable terminal amine groups, commercial availability of higher generation dendrimers, and biocompatibility. Dendrimers have been explored as building blocks in the construction of macromolecular scaffolds for drug delivery to circumvent the following problems: rapid release of drugs physically encapsulated in a dendrimer, and shorter circulation time of dendrimers themselves. Most of the anti-cancer drugs are hydrophobic, and their entrapment in a hydrophilic dendrimer is a useful strategy to enhance their solubility for drug delivery.
