Self Assembled Systems: Design and Drug Delivery Perspectives

In recent years, self assembled materials have received increasing attention in pharmaceutical science as they promise incredible potential for therapeutic and diagnostics applications. Owing to the low aqueous solubility of various drugs, a solubilizing delivery system is often required for reaching sufficient drug bioavailability and/or to facilitate clinical or even preclinical research and development work. Self assembled drug delivery systems, apart from allowing improved solubilization, offer a range of other advantages, including controlled drug release, protection from drug hydrolysis and chemical or enzymatic degradation, reduction of toxicity, and improvement of drug availability. The preparation, characterization and application of materials that are capable of safely and efficiently deliver the drugs to the body of a patient are important challenges in chemical and pharmaceutical sciences. In the present brief overview, we discuss the guiding rules for the design and application of different types of self assembled structures and exemplified with respect to their drug delivery applications. Abstract