Nanoparticles: Organic Nanoparticles

Dendrimers - Dendrimers are branched polymer complexes generated through highly controlled successive polymerization steps. This leads to a nanoparticle which consists of an initiator core contained within branched polymer chains. These polymer chains are generally synthetic, although examples that employ natural polymers such as sugars and amino acids have been reported.

Advantages:

Their highly regulated synthesis enables excellent control over shape and size – important parameters for medical applications
They also display excellent solubility and have been shown to be non-immunogenic.

Limitations:

research into their use in the biomedical field is still early stage. Further studies to establish their biocompatibility and toxicity are ongoing and will be pivotal to their further application.

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Bibliography

Richards, D. A., Maruani, A. & Chudasama, V. (2017). Antibody fragments as nanoparticle targeting ligands: a step in the right direction. Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 63-77 DOI: 10.1039/C6SC02403C http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/sc/c6sc02403c