Polymeric Micro and Nanoparticles as Drug Carriers and Controlled Release Devices: New Developments and Future Perspectives

MERARI CHEVALIER; JIMENA SOLEDAD GONZALEZ; VERA ALEJANDRA ALVAREZ

Advances in Materials Science Research

Nova Publisher

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014; p. 3 - 20

There are many disadvantages associated with the use of certain drugs. These are distributed in the organism according to their physical properties such as solubility, partition coefficient and charge. In consequence, drugs can reach a variety of sites where they are outside of their therapeutic range, where they are inactive, or where their action is unwanted or harmful and therefore with negative side effects. Therefore, therapeutically effective and patient-compliant drug delivery systems continuously lead researchers to design novel tools and strategies. Polymeric micro and nanoparticles are micron and submicron size entities made from a wide variety of polymers. Because of their potential ability to improve current disease therapies these micro and nanodevices are being extensively used as drug carriers and controlled release systems in the field of medicine and pharmacy. Indeed, active pharmaceutical ingredients can be encapsulated, covalently attached, or adsorbed onto such carriers. Since all the novel possibilities offered by such devices many methods have been developed in order to prepare micro and nanoparticles, these methods depends almost exclusively on the polymer and the drug employed. In addition, drug loading and drug release mechanisms from these particulate carriers and its biodistribution in the human organism have attracted the attention of the researchers. Among all the approaches proposed in the last years in this scenario, this chapter presents the most outstanding contributions in the area of polymeric micro and nanoparticles as drug delivery systems.