Click synthesis of glycosylated porphyrin-cored PAMAM dendrimers with specific recognition and thermosensitivity

Glycoporphyrin dendrimers have received increasing attentions due to their distinct physical and chemistry properties, such as fluorescence and water solubility. They also acted as a promising photodynamic therapy (PDT) sensitizer and used in the study of carbohydrate-protein interaction. In this study, different generations of porphyrin-cored dendrimers consisting of glycosylated siloxane-poly (amido amine) typed dendron (PP-Si-PAMAM-D_m-Lac, m = 1, 2, and 3), multifunctional specific-targeting sensitizers, had been synthesized via click reaction. The structure of PP-Si-PAMAM-D_m-Lac was characterized by ¹H NMR, GPC, FT-IR, UV-vis and fluorescence analyses. This glycoporphyrin dendrimers, not only obtained high fluorescence quantum yield and singlet oxygen production efficiency, but also showed specific recognition of lectin and remarkable temperature-responsive property (20–80 °C). These properties proved a facile click synthetic strategy of glycosylated siloxane-poly (amido amine) typed dendrimers with multiple functions as a promising tumor-selective photsensitizer (PS) for PDT and also allow applications in highly sensitive fluorescent probes over a larger temperature window.