29 Characterization of brain networks Based on the spatial patte

29 Characterization of brain networks Based on the spatial patterns of correlated time series that are quite reliably identified in resting state BOLD signals, several intrinsic brain networks

have been identified such as the default-mode network (DMN), the dorsal attention network (DAN) or the salience network (SN). Within these networks, brain regions show increased functional connectivity on time-scales of seconds to minutes. Alterations in resting state networks are found in several neuropsychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer s disease.30 Early studies with simultaneous EEG-fMRI for Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the resting state have tried to identifiy BOLD correlates of specific frequency patterns such as alpha oscillations.31-33 MS-275 concentration However, in order to characterize network dynamics

the idea emerged of relating the EEG signal to the functional connectivity within and between Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical networks. For example, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Hlinka et al showed that 70% of the DMN variance of functional connectivity is explained by delta and beta oscillations.34 Scheeringa et al demonstrated that when alpha power increases, BOLD connectivity between the primary visual cortex and occipital regions decreases as well as the negative coupling between visual areas and regions of the DMN.35 Chang et al investigated the functional connectivity between the DMN, DAN, and SN. They found an inverse relationship between alpha power and the strength of connectivity between DMN and DAN. Moreover, alpha power correlated with the spatial Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical extent of anticorrelation between DMN and DAN.36 While Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical these studies were performed form the perspective of linking established fMRI resting state networks and to investigate the relationship to EEG power of distinct frequency bands, another approach is to relate fMRI patterns with more complex patterns STK38 of EEG organization. For example, the

topographic representation of the EEG remains stable over periods of around 100 ms. These quasistable and unique distributions have been termed “microstates.”37 Microstates reflect the summation of concomitant neuronal activity across brain regions rather than activity specific to any frequency band. Alterations in microstates have been demonstrated in several psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.38 Using simultaneous EEG-fMRI, several authors have now described the relationship between EEG microstates and BOLD resting-state networks.39-41 Another very interesting approach will be the investigation of the relationship of EEG coherence patterns and fMRI connectivity.

The two-way sensitivity analysis was conducted on the two main in

The two-way sensitivity analysis was conducted on the two main input drivers of the ICER estimate, i.e. the utility in the stable health state and the costs of three health states. The PSA attributed appropriate probability distributions to the input parameters. Results The ICER estimated from the model was –£2782 at the end of 1 year, which means the use of ethyl-EPA as an adjunct therapy for BD is more effective than placebo and

it reduces cost. The main factor contributing toward reduction in cost is the lower transitional probability to manic and depressive episodes for the patients taking ethyl-EPA. This means Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that fewer ethyl-EPA-treated patients experienced acute episodes as compared with the placebo group. Hence, service use (such as hospitalization) was lower in the ethyl-EPA group and consequently their treatment costs were lower. The additional drug cost of ethyl-EPA was small (£24) per cycle as compared with the reduction of service use elsewhere. In the Frangou and colleagues [Frangou et al. 2006] trial Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical no inpatient episode was recorded among the patients allocated to ethyl-EPA adjunct treatment as compared Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical with, on average, 3 days of inpatient treatment (daily cost of an inpatient episode of £210) in the placebo arm. The number of inpatient episodes in the case of the placebo group is in line with the RR (0.6) of acute episodes

estimated. Two patients in the placebo arm totalled 216 hours

of day centre contacts (hourly cost of day centre of £9), while no patients in the ethyl-EPA arm had day centre contacts. Lower scores of HRSD Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) in the ethyl-EPA compared with placebo group at the week 12 assessment support Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical better quality of life among patients receiving ethyl-EPA, which is estimated in the model as higher number of QALYs. Greater effectiveness and reduced cost contributed toward negative estimate of the ICER, which implies use of ethyl-EPA as an adjunct treatment for BD is a dominant treatment, falling in the dominant quadrant (II) of the cost-effectiveness plane. Although, the data used from the clinical trial covered a very short time period, the model was Selleck Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Library extended to 5-year time many period, using a discount rate of 3.5% for costs and outcomes, the estimate of 5-year ICER was very close to the 1-year ICER estimate. Sensitivity analysis The tornado diagram in Figure 3 shows how the change (25% increase and 25% decrease) in the value of inputs affect the estimate of ICER. The diagram shows that the main input drivers of the ICER estimate are the utility in the stable health state and the costs of three health states. The tornado diagram also shows that the ICER estimate is negative despite a 25% increase or decrease in the values of most of the inputs. The one-way sensitivity analysis shows that the estimate of ICER was robust.

Our group carried out a number of double-blind, pseudo-randomized

Our group carried out a number of double-blind, pseudo-randomized studies on healthy volunteers who had previous minimal exposure to cannabis. All participants were administered 10 mg of d-9-THC, 600 mg of CBD and placebo (flour)

in three different functional magnetic resonance imaging sessions while performing a response inhibition task, a verbal memory task, an emotional task (viewing fearful faces) and an auditory and visual BMS-907351 order sensory processing task. The overall concluding results showed that Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical d-9-THC and CBD had different behavioural effects and also, at times, opposing brain activation in various regions [Borgwardt et al. 2008; Fusar-Poli et al. 2009; Bhattacharyya et al. 2009b; Winton-Brown et al. 2011]. D-9-THC caused transient psychotic symptoms and increased the levels of anxiety,

intoxication and sedation, whilst CBD had no significant effect on behaviour or these parameters. In relation to the imaging Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical data, during the response inhibition task, relative to placebo, d-9-THC attenuated the engagement of brain regions that normally mediate response inhibition, whilst CBD modulated activity in regions not implicated with Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical this task [Borgwardt et al. 2008]. During the verbal learning and retrieval of word pair tasks, d-9-THC modulated activity in mediotemporal and ventrostriatal regions, whilst CBD had no such effect [Bhattacharyya et al. 2009b]. During an emotional processing task d-9-THC and CBD had

clearly distinct effects on the neural, electrodermal and symptomatic response to fearful faces [Fusar-Poli et al. 2009]. Our results suggest that the effects of CBD on activation in limbic and paralimbic regions may contribute Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to its ability to reduce autonomic arousal and subjective anxiety, whereas the anxiogenic effects of d-9-THC may be related to effects in other brain Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical regions. During the auditory task, again these two compounds had opposite effects in the superior temporal cortex when subjects listened to speech and in the occipital cortex during visual processing [Winton-Brown et al. 2011]. Our group also assessed whether pretreatment with CBD could prevent the acute psychotic symptoms induced by d-9-THC when six healthy volunteers were administered d-9-THC intravenously ALOX15 on two occasions, after placebo or CBD pretreatment [Bhattacharyya et al. 2010]. We found that pretreatment with CBD prevented the transient psychotic symptoms induced by d-9-THC. Both animal and human studies indicate that CBD has anxiolytic properties. In fact in a recent double-blind study carried out on patients with generalized social anxiety disorder, it was found that relative to placebo, CBD significantly reduced subjective anxiety and its effect was related to its activity on limbic and paralimbic areas as shown by single photon emission computed tomography [Crippa et al. 2011].

Thus, cluster analysis is as dependent on the selection of input

Thus, cluster analysis is as dependent on the selection of input variables as factor analysis. Latent class analysis (LCA) assumes the existence of a finite number of mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive groups of individuals. A latent class typology of schizophrenia, proposed by Sham et al,57 using data on 447 patients with nonaffective psychoses, suggested three subgroups: a “neurodevelopmental“ subtype resembling the hebephrenic form of the disorder (poor premorbid adjustment, early onset, prominent negative and disorganized

features); a “paranoid“ subtype Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (less severe, better outcome); and a “schizoaffective“ subtype (dysphoric symptoms). In an epidemiological Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical sample of 343 probands with schizophrenia and affective disorders, Kendler et al58 found 6 latent classes, broadly corresponding to the nosological forms of “Kraepelinian“ schizophrenia: major depression, schizophreniform disorder, schizoaffective disorder (manic), schizoaffective disorder (depressed), and hebephrenia. Similar results, using a combination of principal component analysis and LCA in an epidemiologically ascertained sample of 387

patients with psychoses have Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical been reported by Murray et al.59 In contrast to conventional LCA, a form of latent structure analysis, known as grade of membership (GoM), allows individuals to be members of more than one disease class and represents the latent Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical groups as “fuzzy sets.” 60,61 The GoM model simultaneously click here extracts from the data matrix a number of latent “pure types” and assigns to each individual a set of numerical weights quantifying the degree to which that individual resembles each one of the identified pure types. When applied to the symptom profiles of 1065 cases in the WHO

International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia,62 the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical method identified 8 pure types of which 5 were related to schizophrenia, 2 to affective disorders, and 1 to patients in remission, all showing significant associations with course and outcome variables used as external validators. Familial-sporadic schizophrenia Subtyping schizophrenia by the presence/absence of a positive family history for schizophrenia spectrum disorders was proposed as a strategy expected to be more successful in resolving heterogeneity than symptombased typologies.63 Familial (F) cases are usually defined as having >1 affected first-degree Chlormezanone relative, while sporadic (S) cases have no affected first- or second-degree relatives. The F/S dichotomy rests on the assumption that familial aggregation is primarily of a genetic origin, while sporadic cases result from environmental insults (eg, maternal obstetric complications) or de novo somatic mutations. In the majority of studies using this classification, the proportion of familial cases was in the range of 8% to 15%.

02 ± 0 06) being lower than that of the

02 ± 0.06) being lower than that of the healthy group (0.04 ± 0.08). The interaction between repayment proportion and group was also significant, F(2, 194) = 3.37, P= 0.04; post hoc results showed that patients with depression repaid a smaller ratio than healthy participants when the repayment proportion was low (R= 20%, MDD 0.03 ± 0.07 vs. controls 0.07 ± 0.11; F(1, 97) = 4.34, P= 0.04) or medium Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical (R= 50%, MDD 0.02 ± 0.06 vs. controls

0.04 ± 0.07; F(1, 97) = 4.02, P= 0.048) (Fig. 1D). There was, however, no significant difference between both groups when the repayment proportion was high (R= 80%, P > 0.1). The interaction between risk and group was not significant (F < 1). Discussion We tested whether depressed people would make more deceptive or selleck altruistic decisions in the modified trust game. The results support our hypotheses that people with depression would in fact make fewer altruistic and fewer deceptive responses. In this study, executing deceptive or altruistic responses required Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical cognitive affective processing far more complex than that required for simply repaying the suggested Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical amount. For deceptive or altruistic responses, participants needed to consider the risk and payment conjunction

and then calculate the difference between the amount of actual repayment and the requested amount before making a decision. Therefore, cognitive load would be much higher if Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical they chose to cheat the investor or to repay an amount different from that of those recruited as reference. People with depression have been widely reported to have compromised cognitive and affective processing (Harvey et al. 2005; Ritchey et al. 2011). Thus, it is logical to reason that these people would simply adhere to the requested payment when preferring to be honest, choose the least Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical repayment when wanting to deceive, or repay as much as possible when deciding to respond altruistically, since other choices would tax their limited cognitive and affective resources. But if this were the case, we should

have found a larger ratio of either altruistic or deceptive choices in depressed patients. Instead, compared with healthy participants, people with depression made a smaller ratio of choices on both deceptive and altruistic decisions. The special behavioral patterns of Levetiracetam the depressed patients in this study should therefore not have resulted from their limited cognitive or affective resources. Since the between-group difference was significant in some but not all conditions, this implies that depressed patients were responsive to the varying level of repayment proportion involved in the experiment. Compared with the healthy volunteers, the depressed patients made deceptive responses less frequently and by a smaller ratio only when the repayment proportion was high; they also made altruistic responses less frequently and by a smaller ratio only when the repayment proportion was medium or low.

Recent work in fMRI supports the presence of two large-scale brai

Recent work in fMRI supports the presence of two large-scale brain networks whose coupling is critical for optimal cognitive function: the “task-positive” network comprised of regions typically activated during task performance (dorsal ACC, lateral parietal, dorsolateral prefrontal), and the DMN comprised of regions activated when no task is performed and deactivated during a task (rostral ACC, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex) (Fox et al. 2005). Our results could be interpreted as buy Tubastatin A patients showing

less task-induced deactivation in regions of the DMN, as others have with other tasks (Whitfield-Gabrieli et al. 2009; Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Jeong and Kubicki 2010). Interestingly, a lack of deactivation in precuneus and posterior cingulate was also observed during the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical DD task in the inconsistent SZ compared with HC, suggesting this finding is not

related to task consistency. The insula, a region consistently found abnormal in past structural and functional imaging studies in SZ (Wylie and Tregellas 2010; Palaniyappan and Liddle 2012), was more activated in consistent SZ compared with HC. The insula is Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical part of the “somatic marker” network of brain areas showing increased activity during more emotional decisions (Damasio 1994). It is possible that performance of the DD task is emotionally more taxing for patients than for HC. Along with the ACC, the insula has recently been implicated in a network whose role is to enable the switch between the task positive and DMN (Menon Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and Uddin 2010). Reduced deactivation of regions of the DMN and abnormal insular/ACC activation might suggest disrupted coupling between brain networks. We also compared the groups on activation based on task difficulty. On the hard>easy comparison, a contrast thought to tap more specifically into executive function, we did not identify any regions significantly activated

in the HC or SZ groups, unlike the results of Marco-Pallares et al. (2010) and Kishinevsky et al. (2012). Interestingly though, in our study, the reverse contrast of easy>hard trials revealed widespread cortical activation Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in both groups, similar to results reported by Marco-Pallares et al. (2010). They found activation in multiple regions corresponding to our within-group results, such as the insula, middle cingulate gyrus, middle temporal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex. These authors characterized some of these regions as Thymidine kinase related to reward, which would apply to the insula activation in our study. We identified an interaction between groups and trial difficulty in a large cluster prominently comprising the dACC/medial frontal cortex. In that region, both groups exhibited greater activation to the easy trials compared with the hard trails; however, the difference between easy and hard trials was larger in SZ. Because the function of the dACC/medial frontal cortex has been consistently linked to conflict monitoring (Kerns et al. 2005; Melcher et al. 2008; Reid et al.

8,11,13 Furthermore, increased proliferation and survival of neur

8,11,13 Furthermore, increased proliferation and survival of neurons in the hippocampus mediates learning enhancements.13,15 These studies indicate that the hippocampus remains highly modifiable throughout the lifespan and that exercise has the capacity to take advantage of the plasticity of this structure. Cell proliferation in the hippocampus leads to an increased demand Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical for nutrients to support the new neural architecture. These regions acquire nutrients through

increased vascularization of neural tissue. After exercise, increased vascularization has been routinely found in several different brain regions including the cerebellum, motor cortex, hippocampus, and frontal cortex.16-18 Increased proliferation of cells and capillaries

in the hippocampus work in concert to enhance learning and memory in behavioral paradigms,19 but these effects can also be observed on the neurophysiological level. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical For example, exercise increases the number of synapses in the hippocampus,20 Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical enhances indices of long-term memory formation,20 and elevates the rate of gene expression for molecules associated with learning and TWS119 order memory20 such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and serotonin.8 It is clear from this literature that exercise influences the integrity of the hippocampus by influencing gene expression, cell proliferation and survival, vascularization, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and synaptic plasticity. However, this literature has identified many different brain regions influenced by exercise, indicating that exercise has widespread effects. In conclusion, there are many different

molecular and cellular pathways mediating the effects of exercise on cognitive and behavioral outcomes, including increased neurogenesis, angiogenesis, and the production Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of growth factors important in memory and cognitive function. Effects of physical activity on cognitive function in humans Greater amounts of physical activity and higher cardiorespiratory fitness levels are associated with better cognitive function in older adults. For example, older adult athletes outperform their more sedentary peers on Histone demethylase many different cognitive tasks,21 and fitter individuals are faster and more accurate on executive functioning and memory tasks.22 Longitudinal studies of physical activity have also found that engaging in a greater amount of physical activity earlier in life is associated with better cognitive function later in life,23 with larger effects for individuals engaging in more intense exercises. However, cross-sectional and longitudinal observational studies are often plagued by confounding factors that make it challenging to make causal claims about the link between physical activity and cognitive function.

2002) Moreover, Labrador retrievers with mutated myotubularin ar

2002). Moreover, Labrador retrievers with mutated myotubularin are clinically normal at birth and begin to exhibit progressive generalized muscle weakness and atrophy from 7 weeks of

age (Beggs et al. 2010). This apparent TAM Receptor inhibitor discrepancy may be due to the fact that muscle maturation is achieved before birth in humans while late steps of maturation are completed within the first weeks after birth Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in mice and dogs. There was no strong correlation between the type of mutation and the age of death or the muscle defects noted on biopsies. A possible explanation is that missense and truncating mutations have a similar impact on the function of the protein. Indeed, previous experiments showed that Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical most missense mutations are linked to a large decrease in the protein level, sustaining this hypothesis (Laporte et al. 2001; Tosch et al. 2010). In conclusion this sequential morphological study in myotubular myopathy has shown that in humans there is no period free from morphological abnormalities in the skeletal muscle which is in contrast to what has been observed in mammalian models.

We have also demonstrated a more general disorganization of membrane compartments as evidenced by the presence of a significant Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical disorganization of the cytoskeletal network, the consistent proliferation of T-tubules and the cisternae of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. These changes cannot be explained solely by a delayed maturation of the muscle fiber. Acknowledgments We are very grateful to our team for their technical expertise and secretarial assistance Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical were essential to the success of

this work (M. T. Viou, L. Manéré, G. Brocier, D. Chauveau, M. Beuvin, E. Lacène, F. Levy-Borsato). We also thank N Dondaine for technical assistance in molecular genetic studies. We thank Gillian Butler-Browne Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical for critical reading of the manuscript. Confocal analyses were performed in the “Plate-forme d’Imagerie Cellulaire Pitié Salpêtrière.” This work was supported by the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), the Association 4��8C Française contre les Myopathies (AFM), and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). Conflict of Interest None declared.
Attention and memory are fundamental cognitive processes of human intellectual function. Despite their interdependence, they are mostly investigated as separate processes. Recent neuroimaging studies have shown a tight relation between attentional control mechanisms and episodic memory (Chun and Turk-Browne 2007; Cabeza et al. 2008; Uncapher and Rugg 2009), demonstrating the role of attentional selection and modulation on memory encoding. It is well known that focusing and attending to a stimulus or an event greatly increases the probability to encode and retain this information (Yi et al. 2004; Kandel 2006).

An inclusion of mother liquor for example affects not only produc

An inclusion of mother liquor for example affects not only product quality for its desired applications but also storage stability, particularly with respect to CSD and morphology. This is of considerable importance to the pharmaceutical industry since polymorphic systems exhibit different physicochemical

properties due to the existence of these different crystal structures. Polymorphism influences the disfind more solution characteristics, which along with CSD affects product formulation strategies and bioavailability [1, 2, 11–14, 23–26]. To understand how to form crystalline nanoparticles of hydrophobic active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) via this bottom-up process requires knowledge of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the fundamental thermodynamic and rate processes involved in the generation of solid particles from a liquid phase. This involves solubility limits of the target species (with associated degree of supersaturation), nucleation and growth rates, and turbulence Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical intensity to obtain the requisite mixing levels. It is the energy dissipation levels developed

by turbulence that determine the appropriate length and time scales required to control the phenomenological events occurring. Although these topics are discussed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in some detail for specific applications elsewhere [11–22], a brief summary of each is included here for clarity of purpose. The various aspects and important parameters that affect the “bottom-up” crystallization process to be discussed are the following. Thermodynamics; describes phase characteristics, solubility limits and phase stability, establishing the driving force for crystallization. Nucleation and crystal growth; related to crystallization rates, particle sizes, and crystal

structures. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Complications; describes some of the issues that need to be addressed in designing a process and getting the desired product Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical quality. Flow Patterns, Mixing, and Transport Phenomena; describes the role of mixing in crystallization processes, relevant to processes that involve mixing of multiple streams, heating or cooling. Creating Nanoscale Entities; describes strategies of achieving mixing in the nanometer scale and techniques used. Energy Dissipation; gives an overview of the mechanisms that absorb energy during the process. Nature Reviews Genetics 2.1.1. Thermodynamics Generating solids from a liquid phase is initiated by changes in the thermodynamic state of the solution, thereby reducing the solubility of the target species. Initiation may be through temperature adjustment(s), concentration changes, or by altering solution activity coefficients as in the solvent/antisolvent method. Phase stability is an important factor in determining both when and how fast events progress. The Temperature-Composition phase behavior, see Figure 1, can be used to illustrate some important concepts. A solubility curve represents thermodynamic equilibrium between the phases.

Figure 8 Synthesis of PEG-Intron by conjugating activated PEG wi

Figure 8 Synthesis of PEG-Intron by conjugating activated PEG with free amino groups in the interferon. R is lower alkyl group, R1, R2, R3, R4, R1′, R2′, R3′, R4′, R5 is H or lower alkyl; and x, y, and z are selected from any combination … In other instance, pegvisomant (Somavert) prodrug conjugate is synthesized by covalent attachment of four to six Mw 5000Da PEG units via NHS displacement to several lysine residues available on hGH antagonist Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical B2036, as well as the N-terminal phenylalanine residue is used

for acromegaly treatment [41–43]. Similarly, Amgen’s GDC-0199 price pegfilgrastim (Neulasta®) is used to decrease febrile neutropenia manifested infection and this prodrug is a covalent conjugation of Mw 20000Da monomethoxy PEG aldehyde by reductive amination with the N-terminal methionine residue of the filgrastim protein [44]. On the other hand, Krystexxa (pegloticase) by Savient, used for the treatment of chronic gout, is synthesized by using PEG p-nitrophenyl Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical carbonate

ester [45]. The primary amine lysine side chain is replaced by p-nitrophenol to form carbamates, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical which are further subjected to decrease hydrolysis under mild basic conditions. From the total of 28-29 lysines, approximately 12 lysines on each subunit of urate oxidase are surface accessible in the native tetrameric form of the complete enzyme. In fact, due to the close proximity of some of the lysine residues, PEGylation of one lysine may sterically hinder the addition of another PEG chain [45, 46]. 5.2. PEG-Drug Conjugates PEGylation of drugs does influence the pharmacokinetic properties of drugs and drug carriers

and therefore is emerging as an important area in pharmaceutics. PEG has been successful for protein modification but in the case of low-molecular-weight Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical drugs it presents a crucial limit, the low drug payload accompanying the available methoxy or diol forms of this polymer. This intrinsic limitation had for many years prevented the development of a small drug-PEG conjugate, and also because the conjugates extravasation into tumors by EPR effect Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical is directly proportional to the conjugate’s molecular weight. Unfortunately, in case of PEG the use of larger polymer does not correlate Bay 11-7085 well with an increase in the amount of drug selectively delivered into the tumor. In case of PEG, the number of available groups for drug coupling does not change with the length of polymeric chain, as happens instead with other polymers (e.g., polyglutamic acid, and dextran) or copolymers (e.g., HPMA). The latter can have several functional groups along the polymeric backbone: longer polymer chains correspond to an increased number of functional groups [22, 47–49]. A few studies have been conducted recently to overcome the low PEG loading by using multiarm PEGs either branched at the end chain groups or coupling on them small dendron structures (Figure 9) [47, 49–51].