Structure‐Based Varieties of Polymeric Nanocarriers and Influences of Their Physicochemical Properties on Drug Delivery Profiles

Abstract

Carriers are equally important as drugs. They can substantially improve bioavailability of cargos and safeguard healthy cells from toxic effects of certain therapeutics. Recently, polymeric nanocarriers (PNCs) have achieved significant success in delivering drugs not only to cells but also to subcellular organelles. Variety of natural sources, availability of different synthetic routes, versatile molecular architectures, exploitable physicochemical properties, biocompatibility, and biodegradability have presented polymers as one of the most desired materials for nanocarrier design. Recent innovative concepts and advances in PNC-associated nanotechnology are providing unprecedented opportunities to engineer nanocarriers and their functions. The efficiency of therapeutic loading has got considerably increased. Structural design-based varieties of PNCs are widely employed for the delivery of small therapeutic molecules to genes, and proteins. PNCs have gained ever-increasing attention and certainly paves the way to develop advanced nanomedicines. This article presents a comprehensive investigation of structural design-based varieties of PNCs and the influences of their physicochemical properties on drug delivery profiles with perspectives highlighting the inevitability of incorporating both the multi-stimuli-responsive and multi-drug delivery properties in a single carrier to design intelligent PNCs as new and emerging research directions in this rapidly developing area.

Natural Products-Based Nanoformulations: A New Approach Targeting CSCs to Cancer Therapy

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Enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of nanoparticles for cancer treatment using versatile targeted strategies

“…Recently, stimuli-responsive nanoparticles have also been proposed as a promising active targeting strategy for tumor treatment [ 18 – 22 ]. Specifically, an acidic environment, high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and glutathione (GSH), and overexpression of specific enzymes in the tumor microenvironment (TME) can contribute to the development of stimuli-responsive nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery, as these nanoparticles maintain their stealth features in the normal physiological environment but upon homing to targeted sites or the local microenvironment are responsive and release encapsulated agents [ 18 – 21 ]. Moreover, functionalized nanoparticles can also be activated by external stimuli including magnetic fields, light, and ultrasound, to realize efficient tumor accumulation and controlled drug release in a temporal and spatial-specific fashion [ 22 ].…”

Rosmarinic Acid-Loaded Polymeric Nanoparticles Prepared by Low-Energy Nano-Emulsion Templating: Formulation, Biophysical Characterization, and In Vitro Studies

“…In this sense, the use of biodegradable polymers has attracted much attention in engineering a vast number of polymeric NPs with long lifetimes, including the ability to deliver a myriad of entrapped cargoes. These features make polymers appropriate materials for diverse bio-applications [17][18][19]. To this end, polymeric NPs made up of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) have been widely used in biomedical research owing to their biocompatible and biodegradable properties [20] necessary to transport not only small molecule drugs but also peptides and macromolecules [21][22][23].…”