Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Poly-l-lysine Dendrigrafts (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Less than a decade ago, dendrigrafts of poly-l-lysine (DGLs) joined the family of polycationic dendritic macromolecules. Resulting from the iterative polycondensation of an N-carboxyanhydride in water, four generations of the dendrigraft can be obtained on a multigram scale and without chromatographic purification. DGLs share features with both dendrimers and hyperbranched polymers, but turned out to have unique biophysical and bioactive properties. The macromolecules-in their native form or functionalized-have been extensively characterized by various analytical and computational methods, and have already found numerous applications in the biomedical field, such as drug and gene delivery, biomaterials, tissue engineering, bioimaging, and biosensing. Despite a growing interest for DGLs, there is still plenty of room for further exciting developments that could result from a better exposure of these macromolecules, which is the ambition of this short review.