Polymers for peptide/proteins drugs delivery

MERARI CHEVALIER; JIMENA GONZÁLEZ; VERA ALVAREZ

Handbook of Pharmaceutical Polymers: Structure and Chemistry

Wiley

Año: 2015;

A substantial number of protein drugs have been introduced to the pharmaceutical industry due to the intensive research investigating the therapeutic potential of proteins and peptides. However, although proteins and peptides are valuable active pharmaceutical ingredients they have certain inherent problems such as in vivo instability and a short biological half- life. This is the reason why developing a carrier for the delivery of this kind of biological active represents a great challenge. To solve these problems encapsulation techniques have been developed. Micro or nanoencapsulation can envelop protein/peptide drugs within a polymeric matrix in order to protect them from degradation and modulate the biological active release. This chapter goes over the latest developments in the field of protein and peptide encapsulation using biopolymers as carriers focusing specifically on polymers derived from lactic acid and other natural biodegradable polymers.