Abstract

Development of biomaterials toward drug delivery applications is an active area of research. Drug delivery systems are often PEGylated (modification using polyethylene glycols or PEG) in order to introduce biocompatibility and bypass the immune system responses. To date, PEGylation remains as a benchmark process for designing biologically relevant systems of “stealth” characteristics in vivo. However, recent studies have shown that PEG has some critical shortcomings such as the induction of anti-PEG antibodies, long clearance time, nonbiodegradability, undesired side-products formation, and degradation under mechanical stress. Therefore, over the past decade or so there have been tremendous efforts to develop suitable alternatives for PEGylation. The important class of materials developed and tested are poly(glycerols), poly(oxazolines), poly(amino acids), poly(acrylamides), poly(vinylpyrrolidones), and poly(zwitterions). These materials are currently in the preclinical or early clinical phase and their in vitro and in vivo results are encouraging. This chapter summarizes the research advances made toward the development of alternative materials for PEG and future of this area of research.

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