Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Molecules. 2019 Feb 8;24(3):603. doi: 10.3390/molecules24030603.
Conventional drug delivery approaches are plagued by issues pertaining to systemic toxicity and repeated dosing. Hydrogels offer convenient drug delivery vehicles to ensure these disadvantages are minimized and the therapeutic benefits from the drug are optimized. With exquisitely tunable physical properties that confer them great controlled drug release features and the merits they offer for labile drug protection from degradation, hydrogels emerge as very efficient drug delivery systems. The versatility and diversity of the hydrogels extend their applications beyond targeted drug delivery also to wound dressings, contact lenses and tissue engineering to name but a few. They are 90% water, and highly porous to accommodate drugs for delivery and facilitate controlled release. Herein we discuss hydrogels and how they could be manipulated for targeted drug delivery applications. Suitable examples from the literature are provided that support the recent advancements of hydrogels in targeted drug delivery in diverse disease areas and how they could be suitably modified in very different ways for achieving significant impact in targeted drug delivery. With their enormous amenability to modification, hydrogels serve as promising delivery vehicles of therapeutic molecules in several disease conditions, including cancer and diabetes.
传统的药物输送方法存在着与全身毒性和重复给药相关的问题。水凝胶作为一种方便的药物输送载体，可以确保将这些缺点降到最低，并优化药物的治疗效果。水凝胶具有独特的可调物理特性，赋予其出色的控制药物释放特性，以及保护不稳定药物免受降解的优点，因此成为非常有效的药物输送系统。水凝胶的多功能性和多样性使其应用不仅局限于靶向药物输送，还扩展到伤口敷料、隐形眼镜和组织工程等领域。水凝胶的含水量高达 90%，具有高度多孔性，可容纳用于输送的药物，并促进药物的控制释放。本文讨论了水凝胶及其如何可被用于靶向药物输送应用。提供了来自文献中的合适示例，以支持水凝胶在不同疾病领域的靶向药物输送中的最新进展，以及如何通过非常不同的方式进行适当修改，从而在靶向药物输送中产生显著影响。水凝胶具有巨大的可修饰性，可作为治疗分子在包括癌症和糖尿病在内的几种疾病条件下的有前途的输送载体。
