Dendrimers in tissue engineering

Abstract

Dendrimers are highly branched and multivalent, and monodispersive making them perfect candidates for a myriad of controlled drug delivery applications. Dendrimers possess many other advantages, such as the possibility of modulating surface chemistry and charge, and biodegradation rate and to be processed as scaffolds that can emulate natural extracellular matrices thus opening up unique applications in tissue engineering. The combination of dendrimers and other macromolecules (proteins and carbohydrates), as well as other traditional scaffold polymers, has led to the creation of hybrid scaffolds with new physical, mechanical, and biochemical properties. However, despite the widespread use of dendrimers in biomedical applications, their use in the fabrication of tissue engineering scaffolds remains some-how narrow. The most promising applications of dendritic macromolecules in TE area such as drug delivery strategies, cell differentiation and/or tissue regeneration, 3D/Dynamic platforms and ex vivo/in vivo testing are overviewed and discussed herein.