Dendrimers and their supramolecular nanostructures for biomedical applications

Pharmaceutical nanotechnology is the field of materials science that focuses on techniques to process raw materials to produce nanostructures with desired properties for pharmaceutical applications. Nanostructures can be roughly divided into surface textures, tubular structures or particles, depending on how many of their dimensions are on the nanoscale. The structures may also be divided into hard and soft structures, depending on their physical properties. There has been lately a growing interest to study soft supramolecular structures. In this review, the main focus is to briefly introduce the reader to various aspects of dendrimers, including Janus dendrimers, and supramolecular structures and then focus on recent studies dealing with application of dendrimer-based supramolecular structures in the pharmaceutical field. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.