# Engineering hydrophilic/amphiphilic Vitamin B6-based super antioxidant dendrimers for controlling chronic inflammation > **NIH NIH R15** · CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $24,064 ## Abstract Project Summary Funds are requested to purchase a new CEM (Discover-2.0) microwave synthesis reactor, which will be installed in the Dow Science building (Dow 345) at Central Michigan University (CMU). Microwave reactors can raise temperatures rapidly by irradiating polar materials in a chemical reaction with microwave energy. In addition to rapid heating, they can carry out chemical reactions under high pressure, enabling the reactions to be heated beyond the boiling point of the solvent being used. Therefore, microwave reactions are much faster compared to thermally heated reactions. Our proposed research is to synthesize and evaluate antioxidant dendrimers formed by joining dendrons with various solubilities to attain solubilities that are biocompatible. All the dendrons and dendrimers involved in this research are designed to produce strong antioxidant activity but no pro-oxidant effects by trapping the transition metal ions within their interior. To attach antioxidant building blocks to a scaffold in our dendron/dendrimer synthesis, we use “alkyne-azide click chemistry”, which requires a copper catalyst. The use of copper ions as catalysts results in severe contamination of our dendrimer with copper ions due to the ability of the dendrimer to chelate copper ions. Therefore, we use copper metal granules instead. Copper metal is a far less efficient catalyst than copper ions, but it does not contaminate our antioxidant products, which is very important. To accelerate the reaction rates, we utilize a microwave reactor with which we can form our target products usually in 10-15 hours (> 1 week without). We have a 14-year-old microwave reactor which fails very frequently due to its deteriorating parts with age. It is difficult to start, and if it starts it only runs for 2-3 hours at a time. Without a microwave, our current grant-funded research will be greatly impacted because long synthesis times will hamper other objectives to be achieved within the proposed time frame. Currently there are no other microwave reactors in the entire CMU community. In summary, (i) availability of a microwave reactor is extremely important for syntheses of our proposed dendrons and dendrimers, which are large and complex molecules and (ii) this supplementary funding will allow us to train undergraduate/graduate research students. We believe that procurement of a state-of-the-art microwave unit with this Administrative Supplement will help accelerate the pace of our proposed research as well as help students acquire useful modern microwave synthesis techniques. ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 11037056 - **Project number:** 3R15GM147862-01S2 - **Recipient organization:** CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY - **Principal Investigator:** Choon Young Lee - **Activity code:** R15 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** NIH - **Fiscal year:** 2024 - **Award amount:** $24,064 - **Award type:** 3 - **Project period:** 2022-09-01 → 2025-08-31 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11037056 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11037056, Engineering hydrophilic/amphiphilic Vitamin B6-based super antioxidant dendrimers for controlling chronic inflammation (3R15GM147862-01S2). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11037056. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*