Abstract
Clinically available medications face several hurdles that limit their therapeutic activity, including restricted access to the target tissues due to biological barriers, low bioavailability, and poor pharmacokinetic properties. Drug delivery systems (DDS), such as nanoparticles (NPs) and hydrogels, have been widely employed to address these issues. Furthermore, the DDS improves drugs’ therapeutic efficacy while reducing undesired side effects caused by the unspecific distribution over the different tissues. The integration of NPs into hydrogels has emerged to improve their performance when compared with each DDS individually. The combination of both DDS enhances the ability to deliver drugs in a localized and targeted manner, paired with a controlled and sustained drug release, resulting in increased drug therapeutic effectiveness. With the incorporation of the NPs into hydrogels, it is possible to apply the DDS locally and then provide a sustained release of the NPs in the site of action, allowing the drug uptake in the required location. Additionally, most of the materials used to produce the hydrogels and NPs present low toxicity. This article provides a systematic review of the polymeric NPs-loaded hydrogels developed for various biomedical applications, focusing on studies that present in vivo data.
Highlights
The physiological barriers of the human body challenge the traditional delivery of drugs, limiting drug access to the desired organs and tissues
The use of polymeric NPs-loaded hydrogel (NLH) has been studied for different routes of administration, including parenteral and topical administration
As demonstrated in the reported works, the described systems validate the usefulness of polymeric NLH as drug delivery systems (DDS) for various biomedical applications
Summary
The physiological barriers of the human body challenge the traditional delivery of drugs, limiting drug access to the desired organs and tissues. Due to considerable advances in the nanotechnology field, several nanomaterials have been developed as drug delivery systems (DDS). The clinical application of the DDS faces some concerns regarding their production When it comes to large-scale production, the procedures should ensure the preservation of the DDS physicochemical characteristics for the desired application since these properties directly affect the efficiency, safety, and drug delivery capabilities of the developed DDS. As in vitro studies can only give a partial indication of potential toxicity, in vivo studies are fundamental to evaluate the efficacy and safety of these DDS [4] In this sense, this review aims to discuss the most recently developed polymeric NLH systems for biomedical applications focusing on their in vivo performance for different administration routes, including parenteral and topical administration.
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