Abstract
Successful treatment of most of the diseases is limited by a lack of safe and effective methods of drug delivery. Drug delivery methods have significant effects on the pharmacological efficacy of a drug. Every drug has an optimum concentration range within which maximum benefit is derived; and concentrations above or below the range can be toxic or provide no therapeutic benefits at all. Therefore, development of an efficient drug delivery system remains an important challenge in medicine, and this can be achieved only through multidisciplinary approaches to the mechanisms of delivery of drugs to targets in tissues. Thus, several drug delivery and drug targeting systems are currently being developed. Targeting is an ability to direct the drug(s) to the desired site. There are two major mechanisms, viz., active and passive for drug targeting. Controlled drug release and subsequent biodegradation are also indispensable for developing successful formulations. Colloidal drug vehicles such as micelles, vesicles, liquid crystal dispersions, and nanomaterials consisting of miniscule nanoparticles of 5 - 200 nm diameter have shown great promise as drug delivery systems. In this context, past decades have witnessed certain major advancements. This review article emphasizes on these advances in the field of drug delivery systems.
Highlights
Colloidal drug vehicles such as micelles, vesicles, liquid crystal dispersions, and nanomaterials consisting of miniscule nanoparticles of 5 - 200 nm diameter have shown great promise as drug delivery systems
Drug delivery system is a process of administering drug(s) to achieve its maximal therapeutic benefits in humans or animals
Modulated drug delivery profiles for methylene blue, insulin, and lysozyme have been achieved by irradiation of the drug-loaded nanoshell-composite hydrogels, which showed that drug release was dependent upon the molecular weight of the therapeutic molecule
Summary
Drug delivery system is a process of administering drug(s) to achieve its maximal therapeutic benefits in humans or animals. The main objective of developing new drug delivery systems is to promote the therapeutic effects of a drug by 1) increasing drug’s bioavailability, 2) preventing its toxic, harmful side-effects by increasing the amount and persistence of a drug in the vicinity of target cell and reducing the drug exposure of non-target cells, and 3) minimizing drug degradation and loss [1,2,3]. Drug delivery systems exhibiting pulsatile release of drug(s) closely mimics the way by which the body naturally produces certain hormones like cortisol, insulin etc It is achieved by using drug-carrying polymers that respond to specific stimuli (such as, changes in pH or temperature, exposure to light etc). Determination of optimum dose of any therapeutics and its efficient delivery to target tissues for successfully treating diseases needs a multidisciplinary approach In this approach, several innovative and strategic ideas on controlling the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, non-specific toxicity, immunogenicity, biorecognition, and efficacy of drug(s) were generated and utilized. An extensive effort has been made to bring them together on a single platform, under following headings:
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