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Dendrimers are well-defined (monodisperse) synthetic globular polymers with a range of interesting chemical and biological properties. Chemical properties include the presence of multiple accessible surface functional groups that can be used for coupling biologically relevant molecules and methods that allow for precise heterofunctionalization of surface groups. Biologically, dendrimers are highly biocompatible and have predictable biodistribution and cell membrane interacting characteristics determined by their size and surface charge. Dendrimers have optimal characteristics to fill the need for efficient immunostimulating compounds (adjuvants) that can increase the efficiency of vaccines, as dendrimers can provide molecularly defined multivalent scaffolds to produce highly defined conjugates with small molecule immunostimulators and/or antigens. The review gives an overview on the use of dendrimers as molecularly defined carriers/presenters of small antigens, including constructs that have built-in immunostimulatory (adjuvant) properties, and as stand-alone adjuvants that can be mixed with antigens to provide efficient vaccine formulations. These approaches allow the preparation of molecularly defined vaccines with highly predictable and specific properties and enable knowledge-based vaccine design substituting the traditional empirically based approaches for vaccine development and production.

Ligand immobilization on solid surfaces is an essential step in fields such as diagnostics, bio sensor manufacturing, and new material sciences in general. In this paper a photochemical approach based on anthraquinone as the chromophore is presented. Photochemical procedures offer special advantages as they are able to generate highly reactive species in an orientation specific manner. As presented here, anthraquinone (AQ) mediated covalent DNA immobilization appears to be superior to currently known procedures. A synthetic procedure providing AQ-phosphoramidites is presented. These reagents facilitate AQ conjugation during routine DNA synthesis, thus enabling the AQ-oligonucleotides to be immobilized in a very convenient and efficient manner. AQ-conjugated PCR primers can be used directly in PCR. When the PCR is performed in solution, the amplicons can be immobilized after the PCR. Moreover, when the primers are immobilized prior to the PCR, a solid-phase PCR can be performed and the amplicons are thus produced directly on the solid support.