Multifunctional water-soluble phosphorus dendrimers

Dendrimers are polymeric macromolecules with a regularly branched structure and are synthesised in an iterative fashion. Due to their monodispersity, well-defined shape and extremely high functionality, dendrimers are ideal nano-sized objects for functional and biocompatible surface coatings, biosensing and biomedicine. This dissertation describes the synthesis of ten novel water-soluble phosphorus containing dendrimers and their application in different biological and biomimetic systems. The dendrimers can be divided into two classes; the first type contains either a ferrocene at the core or 24 ferrocenes in the branches. They showed reversible reduction-oxidation behaviour and might be applied in electronic multilayered architectures. Dendrimers of the second class carry a dithiolane functionalised core that can strongly bind to noble metals, like gold substrates. Although such dendrimer coated substrates were unable to tether defect-free lipid bilayer membranes, the coatings were successfully applied for culturing Human Osteoblast cells. The cell adhesion to a coating of polycationic dendrimers was so strong that cell division could not take place, specifically evoking apoptosis. The polyanionic dendrimers, however, promoted excellent cell adhesion and proliferation. Therefore, the practical application of such macromolecular architectures can be envisioned, such as in dendrimer coatings for tissue engineering and or medical implants.