pH-responsive Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery

By Weiwei Gao, Juliana M. Chan, O. Farokhzad. Molecular Pharmaceutics, 2010

906 citations recorded by the source corpus.

First-generation nanoparticles (NPs) have been clinically translated as pharmaceutical drug delivery carriers for their ability to improve on drug tolerability, circulation half-life, and efficacy. Towards the development of the next-generation NPs, researchers have designed novel multifunctional platforms for sustained release, molecular targeting, and environmental responsiveness. This review focuses on environmentally-responsive mechanisms used in NP designs, and highlights the use of pH-responsive NPs in drug delivery. Different organs, tissues, and subcellular compartments – as well as their pathophysiological states – can be characterized by their pH levels and gradients. When exposed to these pH stimuli, pH-responsive NPs respond with physicochemical changes to their material structure and surface characteristics. These include swelling, dissociating or surface charge switching, in a manner that favors drug release at the target site over surrounding tissues. The novel developments described here may revise the classical outlook that NPs are passive delivery vehicles, in favor of responsive, sensing vehicles that use environmental cues to achieve maximal drug potency.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Molecular Biology, Pharmaceutical Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8e02343daff5f5b0a22696e4931ff7921e940bda

How researchers see this paper

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In Biomaterials

1. J. Hanes
2. Ning Gu
3. F. Xiong
4. Fang Yang
5. Dong Liu

In Molecular Biology

1. L. Ensign
2. J. Hanes
3. M. Esteban

In Pharmaceutical Science

1. L. Ensign
2. J. Hanes
3. R. Cone
4. Ning Gu
5. F. Xiong
6. Fang Yang
7. Dong Liu
8. M. Esteban

Citations in the corpus

• Oral Drug Delivery with Polymeric Nanoparticles: The Gastrointestinal Mucus Barriers (2011, background): “A widely adopted approach is to use polymers that exhibit pH-dependent swelling [87].”
• Cancer nanomedicine: a review of recent success in drug delivery (2017, background): “The differences in the pH of blood and intracellular organelles may allow nanocarriers to release drugs specifically when they reach tumor tissue [13].”
• The Smart Drug Delivery System and Its Clinical Potential (2016, background): “Among different types of stimuli, pH is one of the most frequently used triggers for drug release [21-24].”