Dendrimers: General Aspects, Applications and Structural Exploitations as Prodrug/Drug-delivery Vehicles in Current Medicine

Dendrimers are hyper branched macro molecules with well-defined structure and high degree of functionality on the surface. The dendrimer architecture allows control over properties such as shape, size, density, polarity, reactivity, solubility etc. This can be manipulated to design molecules with desired properties in biomedical applications. Recent advancement in correlating structure to biodegradability and invivo performance opens up new avenue for these molecules in biological applications like drug delivery and tissue engineering. The unique structure of dendrimers provides enough attachment sites for drugs in drug delivery applications. It is possible to tune the molecule in such a way as to encapsulate drug molecule outside target area and release in the local environment of targets. This review presents the general aspects of dendrimers and how these properties are exploited for drug delivery applications.