Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
2071068 | Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews | 2012 | 14 Pages |
Titratable polyanions, and more particularly polymers bearing carboxylate groups, have been used in recent years to produce a variety of pH-sensitive colloids. These polymers undergo a coil-to-globule conformational change upon a variation in pH of the surrounding environment. This conformational change can be exploited to trigger the release of a drug from a drug delivery system in a pH-dependent fashion. This review describes the current status of pH-sensitive vesicles, polymeric micelles, and nanospheres prepared with polycarboxylates and their performance as nano-scale drug delivery systems, with emphasis on our recent contribution to this field.
Graphical abstractProtonation- (A) and ionization-induced (B) drug release from different nanocarriers containing titratable polyanions.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (472 K)Download as PowerPoint slide