Novel water-soluble and photostable dendritic L-DOPA prodrugs

POLY 330

Minghui Chai, minghui.chai@cmich.edu, Shengzhuang Tang, tang1s@cmich.edu, and Ajit Sharma, sharm1a@cmich.edu. Department of Chemistry, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
A drug for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, L-Dopa, was converted into well-defined dendritic macromolecules which were characterized by MALDI and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A third generation L-Dopa dendrimer contained thirty L-Dopa residues which made up the core, branches and periphery. These Dopa dendrimers showed a twenty-fold increase in aqueous solubility over L-Dopa. In addition, while L-Dopa solutions became colored within a day, the L-Dopa dendrimer solutions remained colorless for several months under identical conditions. Individual L-Dopa moieties in the dendrimers were connected to one another with hydrolyzable diester linkages. This novel concept of transforming a drug into its dendritic form not only yields potential slow release prodrugs but may also demonstrate beneficial properties for drug formulations.