Developing and applying a drug delivery model for liposomal and dendritic multifunctional nanoparticles

This account deals with a strategy for designing multifunctional liposomes and dendritic polymers. Such nanoparticles, although quite different in size and structure, both fulfill properties that drug carriers should exhibit, i. e. specificity or targeting ability, extended time of circulation in biological fluids and ability to be transported through cell membranes. Furthermore, having developed these multifunctional liposomal and dendritic carriers, a drug delivery model is presented that employs instead of cells multilamellar liposomes, which interact with the above mentioned multifunctional carriers. This interaction should primitively mimic the processes which occur in living cells when they interact with loaded or unloaded liposomal and dendritic nanoparticles. Multifunctionality and multivalency coupled with molecular recognition between the interacting pairs render the loaded nanoparticles effective drug delivery vehicles.