Chapter 7 - Drug–polymer conjugate tailoring by disulfide linkage for controlled and targeted drug delivery

Abstract

In this chapter, the author focuses on the drug–polymer conjugate tailoring by a disulfide linkage. This involves using a medicine conjugate that takes advantage of the fact that this unique covalent bond can be broken and put back together again. This method was just recently approved for human use. Many studies have concluded that disulfide linkages are now used to connect drug polymers for drug delivery in the next generation of pharmaceuticals. This chapter also covered how the problems with some cancer or virus treatments, such as nonselective cytotoxicity and short half-lives, have been fixed. All of these problems can be fixed by tailoring the drug–polymer conjugate with a disulfide linkage. This chapter also explains how and where tailoring by disulfide bonds in drug polymers affects the design of the delivery and how the delivery strategies are interpreted. In some sections of the chapter, we talked briefly about a few promising disulfide-containing prodrugs and brought up some major problems with studying and making disulfide-containing prodrugs: that the release of the active ingredient only happens in tumors, which factors affect how disulfide bonds burn in living things? And What problems do disulfide-containing prodrugs face now and, in the future, when they go from the lab to the clinic? This chapter concluded with the applications of drug-polymer conjugates in drug delivery.