New dendrimer materials for drug delivery

• Main Author: Gan, Bei Shan
• Other Authors: Andrew Clive Grimsdale
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Materials
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/36182
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This report presents a study of new dendrimer materials for drug delivery. The approach is to utilize nanoparticles as drug carriers to target drugs to bone cancer tumours, thereby increasing efficacy and reducing drug dosage. The final aim of this project is to synthesize a fully functionalized phosphonate tag dendrimer that is not only biocompatible to the bone, but is also able to actively target and release drug at bone cancer sites with enhanced cycle time. This can be achieved by coupling PEG to antibodies to escape recognition by macrophages, enhancing cycle time and coupling with other ligands (i.e. folic acid) that recognize and target bone cancer tumour-associated antigens or receptors. For this project, the author has successfully fulfilled the purpose of synthesizing the phosphonate tags (dendrons) substituted with monophosphonate groups for bone bonding and attachment to drug-containing hydroxyapatite nanoparticles.