A hydrazide-anchored dendron scaffold for chemoselective ligation strategies

Chemoselective ligation, including "click" chemistry, has found wide utility in general synthetic strategies and the specific modification of polymers and biomolecules. This has resulted in a number of applications of such approaches, particularly in the biomedical area, including diagnostic imaging and drug delivery. However, tools to chemoselectively decorate target molecules with multiple copies of a particular drug, ligand or label are lacking. We describe the design and synthesis of a hydrazide-anchored dendron scaffold for chemoselective ligation to carbonyl moieties, and demonstrate its use in the modification of aldehyde-rich surfaces with the RGD integrin-binding ligand.