Therapeutic protein and drug imprinted nanostructures as controlled delivery tools

Abstract Polymers play an enormous role in the drug delivery field owing to their flexibility, biocompatibility, and controllable size properties. With the advances in the polymer technology and nanotechnology, the novel drug delivery systems (DDSs) based on nanoparticles have been successfully developed. Nanoparticulate DDSs with an enhanced permeation allow targeted delivery of an intended therapeutic drug to the site of action with predetermined time and activity. Numerous applications have been reported which use nanoparticles as smart delivery systems for synthetic, semi-synthetic or natural drugs, which could be small molecules or huge molecules like proteins. In smart DDSs the critical point is to achieve tunable drug release. Diffusion, matrix degradation or both can control this property. In recent years the use of molecular imprinting technology to arrange the drug release properties from the polymer matrix is attracting significant attention. The basis of this approach is the affinity of an imprinted polymer for the drug molecule, which provides high loading capacity and sustained release profiles. Imprinting also allows for construction of responsive drug release systems based on competitive binding of the imprinted molecule with the weakly bound drug. The studies on the nanoparticle-based imprinted delivery systems will be summarized in this chapter.