Direct TLC/MALDI–MS coupling for modified polyamidoamine dendrimers analyses
Résumé
Polyamidoamine (PAMAM) are synthetic dendrimers which present attractive properties for the biolog- ical and biomedical fields, as they proved to be efficient drug and gene carriers. In order to increase their transfection efficiency, chemical modifications of the amino end-groups had been reported. In this work, the synthesis of the ammonia-cored G1(N) PAMAM and the consecutive chemical modification with glycine or phenylalanine amino-acids were monitored using the coupling of thin layer chromatography (TLC) with matrix–assisted laser desorption ionization–mass spectrometry (MALDI–MS). Thus, the moni- toring of the PAMAM synthesis included the identification of the by-products such as defective structures of PAMAM dendrimers as well as the study of phenylalanine-grafted PAMAM oligomer distribution.