ABSTRACT
Objective: Dendrimers are three-dimensional nanostructures that have numerous applications in medicine, including drug delivery and imaging. Although anionic dendrimer polyethylene glycol-citrate has a high potential to increase solubility of waterinsoluble drugs and drug delivery, its multi-step synthesis procedure is time consuming. In addition, toxic substances such as dichloromethane are used in its synthesis procedure. In this study, we have developed a simple one-step synthesis method using green chemistry
Methods: We examined four different methods to improve the synthesis method of this dendrimer. Products were characterized by FTIR, LC-MS and DLS. Cytotoxicity was assessed by the XTT method
Results: We synthesized a G2 polyethylene glycol-citrate dendrimer in one-step without purifying G1. This process was chosen as a beneficial method for synthesis of the G2 dendrimer. When compared with previous methods, this procedure had higher efficiency and greatly reduced response. This procedure used nontoxic materials. XTT assay results showed that this dendrimer created by green chemistry had no cytotoxicity in Hela and Vero cells up to a concentration of 800 microM
Conclusion: One-step synthesis of anionic polyethylene glycol-citrate G2 dendrimer is a simple, beneficial production method. The dendrimer is biocompatible and can be used as a suitable carrier for drug delivery purposes
ABSTRACT
To prepare a basis for qualitative promotion of scientific publications of Iran's universities of medical science, this survey studied quality and quantity of scientific production of these universities in a ten year period employing scientometrics qualitative and quantitative indicators. In this survey, the study population was the total number of Iranian universities of medical science that had publications in ISI Web of Science Database. Sampling, on the basis of Garfield research, was done in non parametric method. Nineteen universities of medical science with at least 25 publications, from total 42 universities of medical science in Iran, were selected. The source of data collecting was Web of Science database and the tools of data collecting were citation analysis and search system of database; data were gathered in for aspects: production, citation, citation impact, and percentage of cited documents. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics using SPSS software. Ranking universities based on qualitative and quantitative criteria were different. The rate of overlap between lists of the best universities based on four indicators was 25%. Mashhad University of Medical Science was the sole university attended in lists of the best universities based on four indicators. Difference between ranking universities on the basis of qualitative and quantitative indicators indicates that qualitative evaluation parallel to quantitative evaluation should be considered for scientific assessing of these universities