Dendrimers and Dendrons as Versatile Building Blocks for the Fabrication of Functional Hydrogels

Abstract

Hydrogels have emerged as a versatile class of polymeric materials with a wide range of applications in biomedical sciences. The judicious choice of hydrogel precursors allows one to introduce the necessary attributes to these materials that dictate their performance towards intended applications. Traditionally, hydrogels were fabricated using either polymerization of monomers or through crosslinking of polymers. In recent years, dendrimers and dendrons have been employed as well-defined building blocks in these materials. The multivalent and multifunctional nature of dendritic constructs offers advantages in either formulation or the physical and chemical properties of the obtained hydrogels. This review highlights various approaches utilized for the fabrication of hydrogels using well-defined dendrimers, dendrons and their polymeric conjugates. Examples from recent literature are chosen to illustrate the wide variety of hydrogels that have been designed using dendrimer-and dendron-based building blocks for applications, such as sensing, drug delivery and tissue engineering.

Decoration of Nanofibrous Paper Chemiresistors with Dendronized Nanoparticles toward Structurally Tunable Negative‐Going Response Characteristics to Human Breathing and Sweating

“…In comparison to traditional linkers, dendrimers represent a class of macromolecules with well‐defined 3D branched structure exhibiting a high degree of functionality and versatility. Dendrimers featuring multiple “wedges” and dendrons featuring single “wedge” are not only well defined as structural building blocks, but also have controllable sizes ranging from 1 to 30 nm depending on their generation . In particular, dendrimer–nanoparticle conjugates have been attracting considerable interest in medicine, drug delivery, vapor sorption, diagnostics, and electrochemical biosensors for enzyme immobilization .…”

Dendrimers for ocular drug delivery

“…3). 54 There are several potential strategies for fabricating mucoadhesive ocular hydrogels from PAMAM dendrimers alone. 55–57 The properties of these materials can be easily tuned by modifying parameters such as the concentration of polymer in solution or the number of reactive groups present.…”

Multifunctional Nanomaterials: Design, Synthesis and Application Properties

“…In contrast to conventional polymers, high local concentrations of certain structural elements and functionalities can be obtained, making them particularly suitable for applications in the biomedical sector [ 1 ]. Dendritic-based materials are therefore potential alternatives to conventional polymers [ 2 ].…”