PEGylated poly(amidoamine) dendrimers-based drug loading vehicles for delivering carboplatin in treatment of various cancerous cells

The fourth generation (G4) of poly(amidoamine) dendrimer was PEGylated and then physically incorporated with carboplatin to develop the new drug delivery carrier. The proton nuclear magnetic resonance (H-1 NMR) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were utilized to confirm the successful synthesis and incorporation. The PEGylation leads to increase the particle dimension of G4 dendrimer to 4.04 to 30.67nm that was still in the effective range for killing cancerous cells. The cytotoxicity on L929 fibroblasts demonstrated that the PEGylation of G4 could eliminate the toxic caused by amine surrounding groups of G4. Three cancerous cells including the cervical cancer cell line (HeLa), the adenocarcinomic human alveolar basal epithelial cells (A549), and the human breast cancer cell line (MCF7) were treated with G4-PEG@CAR as a function of CAR concentrations. The results of resazurin test and live/dead assay indicated that the killing effect of G4-PEG@CAR on three representative cells were achieved and increased following the enhancement of CAR concentration. Furthermore, the better effectiveness of G4-PEG@CAR was achieved on Hela.