In this talk, the convenient, flexible and modular synthetic approach for supramolecular nanoparticles (SNPs) and their application in the biological field will be introduced. The main challenge for researchers is in designing a platform that is compatible with the complexity of living systems. As compared to the conventional synthetic method of nanoparticles that is often time consuming, tedious, and limiting in its ease of generating a diverse set of sizes and unique surface chemistry, supramolecular chemistry combines the twin concepts of self-assembly and molecular recognition to easily generate unique nanostructured materials from the non-covalent bonding of the same small set of molecular building blocks. In our system, the cyclodextrin/adamantane (CD/Ad) recognition was employed to achieve self-assembly of SNPs from three different molecular building blocks: (i) Ad-grafted polyamidoamine dendrimer, 8-Ad-PAMAM, (ii) �-Cyclodextrin-grafted branched polyethylenimine, CD-PEI, and (iii) Ad-functionalized PEG compound, Ad-PEG. The three-component supramolecular approach offers synthetic convenience, flexibility, and modularity to alter the sizes and the surface chemistry of the SNPs. The uniqueness of this self-assembly approach is that it allows the surfaces of the SNPs to be decorated with various targeting ligands, while offering flexibility in the selection of many different loadings. These tailored SNPs achieve desired mechanical and functional properties and are widely applied for the diagnosis and therapy of diseases.

Supramolecular nanoparticles (SNPs) for molecular diagnostics and therapeutics

248th National Meeting (2014)

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