Applications of dendrimers typically involve conjugating other chemical species to the dendrimer surface that can function as detecting agents (such as a dye molecule), affinity ligands, targeting components, radioligands, imaging agents, or pharmaceutically active compounds. Dendrimers have very strong potential for these applications because their structure can lead to multivalent systems. In other words, one dendrimer molecule has hundreds of possible sites to couple to an active species. Researchers aimed to utilize the hydrophobic environments of the dendritic media to conduct photochemical reactions that generate the products that are synthetically challenged. Carboxylic acid and phenol-terminated water-soluble dendrimers were synthesized to establish their utility in drug delivery as well as conducting chemical reactions in their interiors. This might allow researchers to attach both targeting molecules and drug molecules to the same dendrimer, which could reduce negative side effects of medications on healthy cells.
Dendrimers can also be used as a solubilizing agent. Since their introduction in the mid-1980s, this novel class of dendrimer architecture has been a prime candidate for host–guest chemistry. Dendrimers with hydrophobic core and hydrophilic periphery have shown to exhibit micelle-like behavior and have container properties in solution. The use of dendrimers as unimolecular micelles was proposed by Newkome in 1985. This analogy highlighted the utility of dendrimers as solubilizing agents. The majority of drugs available in pharmaceutical industry are hydrophobic in nature and this property in particular creates major formulation problems. This drawback of drugs can be ameliorated by dendrimeric scaffolding, which can be used to encapsulate as well as to solubilize the drugs because of the capability of such scaffolds to participate in extensive hydrogen bonding with water. Dendrimer labs are trying to manipulate dendrimer's solubilizing trait, to explore dendrimers for drug delivery and to target specific carriers.
For dendrimers to be able to be used in pharmaceutical applications, they must surmount the required regulatory hurdles to reach market. One dendrimer scaffold designed to achieve this is the polyethoxyethylglycinamide (PEE-G) dendrimer. This dendrimer scaffold has been designed and shown to have high HPLC purity, stability, aqueous solubility and low inherent toxicity.