The pleasingly favourable reception of the tetralogy on dendrimer chemistry in the Topics in Current Chemistry series prompted us to assemble the present follow-up issue "Dendrimers V". This is also justified by the quickly growing field, in particular, because the focus had not been directed towards the exciting applications that dendrimers have found recently. Dendrimer chemistry is experiencing new challenges coming from supramolecular chemistry, nanotechnology, and biochemistry and the new developments emerging from these interdisciplinary marriages of different fields are invaluable for the future of materials and life sciences. This is also reflected in the large number of recent publications in these areas dealing with dendritic molecules.