Physiological and Pathological Bases for Designing High Performance Drug Delivery Carriers

Abstract

The strategy of using drug delivery systems (DDSs) to deliver drugs will confront different physiological environments in the human body. A better understanding of the physiological base is the key step for the success of advanced starch-based DDSs with high performance. For example, various biological stimuli, such as temperature, pH, and hypoxia at the organ, tissue, and cell levels can be exploited to trigger the stimulus-responsive delivery of therapeutics. Besides, external stimuli such as electric/magnetic fields or light have been developed to construct stimulus responsiveness of drug carriers. On the other hand, when it comes to clinical application, DDS will confront different physiological environments along with various administration routes, such as oral cavity mucosa or blood circulation. The drug carriers will interact with these physiological environments at tissues, cell, and molecular levels. With a deeper understanding of these physiological bases, further advances have been introduced by DDSs endowed with target-specific and bioadhesive properties to various sites in the body to reduce the side effects and enhance the bioavailability of drugs at the diseased site. Regarding this, the physiological and pathological hallmarks of the organ or cell levels and the interactions between the physiological structure and materials are highlighted in this section.