Polymeric multilayer capsules for drug delivery.

The advent of Layer-by-Layer (LbL) assembly to fabricate polymeric as well as hybrid multilayer thin films has opened exciting avenues for the design of multifunctional drug carriers with extreme control over their physico-chemical properties. These polymeric multilayer capsules (PMLC) are typically fabricated by sequential adsorption of polymers onto a spherical substrate with dimensions varying from 10 nm to several microns and larger. In this critical review, we give an overview of the recent advances in the field of PMLC with respect to drug delivery and point out how sophisticated capsule engineering can lead to well-defined drug carriers with unique properties (139 references).