Moving Forward with Dendrimers: A Themed Issue in Honor of Professor Donald A. Tomalia on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

Dear Colleagues,

Biomolecules invites submissions for a Special Issue in honor of Professor Donald A. Tomalia on the occasion of his 80^th birthday, in recognition for his remarkable contributions to discovery and development of dendrimer’s chemistry and to mark his effort for pursuing their applications.

Professor D. A. Tomalia’s career has spanned five decades and addresses some of the most fundamental questions related to synthesis, classification, characterization and applications of a new class of nanomolecules with branched structures, named by him as polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers.

Dendrimers are nanosized hyperbranched polymers synthesized using classic organic chemistry techniques, and characterized by well-defined molecular mass and structures. They can be engineered to perform specific chemical or biological functions. Due to the attractive and unique properties of these nanomolecules, which are capable of interacting with biological systems (e.g., multivalency, near-monodispersity, etc.), our knowledge of many cellular processes has been enhanced significantly. These include, among the others, supramolecular processes at water/lipid interfaces, transport of various biologically relevant molecules across cellular membranes, targeting receptors, and the opportunity to follow metabolic pathways related to processes of life.

These interesting properties seem to be of a general character and are related to the branched architecture and polyvalency. Indeed, since 1985 when Professor Tomalia published the first fundamental paper on PAMAMs, several other types of dendrimers have been designed and successfully applied in biomedical research. His vision of molecules with tree-like structures and well-defined 3D architectures has given rise to multifunctional, highly attractive smart materials such as drug and gene delivery vectors.

For this Special Issue, we invite submissions of papers on topics related to the work of Professor D. A. Tomalia, particularly focusing on the biological aspects in the wide context of these interesting molecules.

Prof. Zofia Urbanczyk-Lipkowska
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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