Fig. 1. Boronic acid–rich dendrimer with robust efficiency in cytosolic protein delivery.

(A) Mechanism of boronate-rich dendrimer in complexation with protein complex formation. The dendrimer could bind with both negatively and positively charged proteins via a combination of nitrogen-boronate complexation and cation-π and ionic interactions between the two species. (B) Boronic acid–rich dendrimers with different chemical structures show distinct behaviors in the delivery of proteins into HeLa cells. Fluorescently labeled BSA was used as the model protein here. (C) Model proteins with different molecular weights and pIs in this study.