Cyanine dyes are promising candidates in biomedical applications. Although various\ndelivery systems have been developed to enhance their properties, their dendrimer-based delivery\nsystems are seldom investigated. Herein, amine-terminated generation 5 poly(amidoamine)\n(G5.NH2) dendrimers and new indocyanine green (IR820) dyes were chosen as models to study\nthe loading ability of dendrimers for cyanine dynes. G5.NH2 dendrimers were pre-modified with\narginine-glycine-aspartic (RGD) peptides, poly(ethylene glycol) chains, and acetyl groups to be\nendowed with cancer cell specificity and biocompatibility. The formed Ac-PR dendrimers were used\nto load IR820, followed by thorough characterization. The loaded number of IR820 was estimated to\nbe 6.7 per dendrimer. The stability of IR820 was improved through dendrimer loading, which was\nproved by their UV-vis spectra under different kinds of storage conditions. In addition, the formed\nAc-PR dendrimers can retain the loaded IR820 effectively. Their cytocompatibility was desirable under\nthe studied conditions. Their cellular uptake behaviors were demonstrated to be enhanced by RGD\nmodification, showing concentration-, co-incubation time-, and �±v�²3 integrin receptor-dependent\nproperties, displaying a cytoplasm-location. The findings from this work demonstrated the versatile\nloading and delivery capacity of dendrimers for near-infrared (NIR) dyes, providing fundamental\ndata for the development of dendrimer/NIR dye systems for biomedical applications, especially for\ncancer theranostic applications.
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