Biodegradable Polymers: Drug Delivery Applications

Abstract

Most of the drug delivery systems are designed using various biodegradable and non-biodegradable polymers, which play important roles in the modifi cation of drug release, absorption, distribution, and elimination for improving the drug stability, effi cacy, safety, and patient compliance. Polymers occupy a major portion of materials used for fabrication of controlled release formulations and drug-targeting systems because this class of materials presents seemingly endless diversity in topology and chemistry, which offers easy modifi cation or functionalization on them. Most of the natural and synthetic biodegradable polymers have some specifi c properties such as degradability, adhesiveness, non-immunogenicity, non-infl ammatory, and non-toxicity as well as providing the signifi cant advantage of being able to be broken down and removed after they have served their function. Biodegradable polymers are widely used in designing novel drug delivery systems such as implants, depots, microspheres, nanospheres, dendrimers, polymersomes, micelle systems, and extensively applied in biomedical and drug delivery fi elds. This entry introduces different types of natural and synthetic biodegradable polymers with specifi c physiochemical and biological properties along with their use in designing novel drug delivery systems. In addition, novel drug delivery systems and their use in delivery of different types of biomolecules are discussed in detail.