A mechanistic view of lipid membrane disrupting effect of PAMAM dendrimers

• PAMAM G5 dendrimer perturbs the ordered structure of the multilamellar lipid system.
• PAMAM G5 when interacting with lipid bilayers results highly swollen, fragmented bilayers and small vesicles.
• FTIR spectroscopy proves that amine groups of PAMAM G5 interact with the phosphate group of the lipids.

The effect of 5th generation polyamidoamine (PAMAM G5) dendrimers on multilamellar dipalmitoylphosphocholine (DPPC) vesicles was investigated. PAMAM was added in two different concentrations to the lipids (10−3 and 10−2 dendrimer/lipid molar ratios). The thermal behavior of the evolved systems was characterized by DSC; while the structure and the morphology were investigated with small- and wide-angel X-ray scattering (SWAXS), freeze-fracture electron microscopy (FFTEM) and phosphorus-31 nuclear magnetic resonance (31P NMR) spectroscopy, respectively. IR spectroscopy was used to study the molecular interactions between PAMAM and DPPC. The obtained results show that the dendrimers added in 10−3 molar ratio to the lipids generate minor perturbations in the multilamellar structure and thermal character of liposomes, while added in 10−2 molar ratio dendrimers cause major disturbance in the vesicular system. The terminal amino groups of the dendrimers are in strong interaction with the phosphate headgroups and through this binding dendrimers disrupt the regular multilamellar structure of DPPC. Besides highly swollen, fragmented bilayers, small vesicles are formed.

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