Interfacing materials science and biology for drug carrier design

Abstract

Over the last ten years, there has been considerable research interest in the development of polymeric carriers for biomedicine. Such delivery systems have the potential to significantly reduce side effects and increase the bioavailability of poorly soluble therapeutics. The design of carriers has relied on harnessing specific variations in biological conditions, such as pH or redox potential, and more recently, by incorporating specific peptide cleavage sites for enzymatic hydrolysis. Although much progress has been made in this field, the specificity of polymeric carriers is still limited when compared with their biological counterparts. To synthesize the next generation of carriers, it is..