Structure of thermoresponsive carbosilane dendritic gels for drug carrier applications

We propose to obtain high quality and broad q range SAXS measurements from solutions of a series of thermo-responsive dendritic nanogels with potential applications as drug carriers. The obtained SAXS data will provide insight into the nanogels assembly in solutions and the impact of temperature and core-functionality to be directly compared with obtained structural parameters from other experimental techniques. The preliminary SAXS data obtained at ALBA, from the precursors dendritic systems, allowed us to confirm that they form ellipsoidal micelles. SAXS performed on the crosslinked systems suggest a hierarchical structure were the crosslinked nanogels shows an structure of ellipsoidal micelles interconnected into larger aggregates. However to determine more precisely the shape of the micelles, the nanogels and the location of the loaded drugs , wider q range is needed.