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CANCER NANOMEDICINE

Potent drugless dendrimers

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 1, pages 686–688 (2017)Cite this article

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A dendrimer that depletes bioavailable copper as a result of its internal make-up displays powerful anticancer activity in mice, and no observable adverse effects.

Dendrimers — a special class of synthetic polymers characterized by a distinct ramified molecular architecture1 that differs from those of traditional linear and hyperbranched polymers — possess a well-defined structure consisting of three distinct domains: a central core, where dendrimer growth begins; branching units, which allow for dendrimer growth in geometrically organized radial layers (known as generations); and an abundance of terminal functionalities on the surface, which bestows the dendrimers with specific properties and multivalent cooperativity. These features make dendrimers appealing for biomedical applications as drugs and as drug-delivery or imaging agents2. Reporting in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Youqing Shen and colleagues now show that a poly(acyl thiourea) dendrimer decorated with poly(ethylene glycol) termini exhibits extremely powerful intrinsic anticancer activity and undetectable adverse effects in vivo, and that the anticancer activity of the PEGylated dendrimer arises from it depleting in vivo bioavailable copper and intracellular reactive oxygen species, hence inducing anti-angiogenesis and the inhibition of cancer-cell proliferation3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, Centre Interdisciplinaire de Nanoscience de Marseille, Aix-Marseille University, UMR 7325, Equipe Labellisée Ligue Contre le Cancer, 163, avenue de Luminy, 13288, Marseille, France

    Zhenbin Lyu & Ling Peng

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  1. Zhenbin Lyu
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  2. Ling Peng
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Correspondence to Ling Peng.

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Lyu, Z., Peng, L. Potent drugless dendrimers. Nat Biomed Eng 1, 686–688 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-017-0136-3

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