Department of Pharmacy, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad, 22060, Pakistan.
Faculty of Pharmacy and Alternative Medicine, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Punjab, 63100, Pakistan.
Drug Deliv Transl Res. 2019 Apr;9(2):595-614. doi: 10.1007/s13346-018-0512-x.
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory disease of the colon that severely affects the quality of life of patients and usually responds well to anti-inflammatory agents for symptomatic relief; however, many patients need colectomy, a surgical procedure to remove whole or part of the colon. Though various types of pharmacological agents have been employed for the management of UC, the lack of effectiveness is usually predisposed to various reasons including lack of target-specific delivery of drugs and insufficient drug accumulation at the target site. To overcome these glitches, many researchers have designed and characterized various types of versatile polymeric biomaterials to achieve target-specific delivery of drugs via oral route to optimize their targeting efficiency to the colon, to improve drug accumulation at the target site, as well as to ameliorate off-target effects of chemotherapy. Therefore, the aim of this review was to summarize and critically discuss the pharmaceutical significance and therapeutic feasibility of a wide range of natural and synthetic biomaterials for efficient drug targeting to colon and rationalized treatment of UC. Among various types of biomaterials, natural and synthetic polymer-based hydrogels have shown promising targeting potential due to their innate pH responsiveness, sustained and controlled release characteristics, and microbial degradation in the colon to release the encapsulated drug moieties. These characteristic features make natural and synthetic polymer-based hydrogels superior to conventional pharmacological strategies for the management of UC.
溃疡性结肠炎（UC）是一种结肠炎症性疾病，严重影响患者的生活质量，通常对消炎药物治疗有良好的缓解症状效果；然而，许多患者需要结肠切除术，即一种切除整个或部分结肠的手术。尽管已经使用了各种类型的药理学药物来治疗 UC，但缺乏疗效通常是由于多种原因引起的，包括药物缺乏靶向特异性输送和在靶部位的药物积累不足。为了克服这些问题，许多研究人员设计并表征了各种类型的多功能聚合物生物材料，通过口服途径实现药物的靶向传递，以优化其对结肠的靶向效率，增加药物在靶部位的积累，并改善化疗的脱靶效应。因此，本综述的目的是总结和批判性讨论广泛的天然和合成生物材料在高效药物靶向结肠和合理治疗 UC 方面的药物学意义和治疗可行性。在各种类型的生物材料中，天然和合成聚合物基水凝胶由于其内在的 pH 响应性、持续和控制释放特性以及在结肠中的微生物降解，以释放包裹的药物部分，显示出有前途的靶向潜力。这些特征使天然和合成聚合物基水凝胶优于传统的药理学策略，用于治疗 UC。
