High-throughput screening of dendrimer-binding drugs

A convenient approach for the high-throughput screening of dendrimer-binding drugs by NMR techniques including saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR and Hadamard-encoded nuclear Overhauser effect measurements is presented. The screening results for insoluble drugs show that phenylbutazone and sulfamethoxazole prefer to localize in the interior pockets of dendrimer, while mycophenolic acid mostly binds on the dendrimer surface, and noncharged insoluble drugs like trimethoprim and primidone do not interact with dendrimers. In another path for soluble drugs, n-butanoic acid and dimethylformamide are screened as dendrimer-binding compounds from a screening pool containing eight soluble compounds by STD NMR. The screening of dendrimer-binding insoluble or soluble compounds can be finished within an hour.