Author(s)

Pramod Vishwanath Prasad, Pramod Chandra Pal, D. Nageswara Rao, Tulsidas G. Shrivastav, Ren-Shan Ge

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Successful treatment of most of the diseases is limited by a lack of safe and effective methods of drug delivery. Drug delivery methods have significant effects on the pharmacological efficacy of a drug. Every drug has an optimum concentration range within which maximum benefit is derived; and concentrations above or below the range can be toxic or provide no therapeutic benefits at all. Therefore, development of an efficient drug delivery system remains an important challenge in medicine, and this can be achieved only through multidisciplinary approaches to the mechanisms of delivery of drugs to targets in tissues. Thus, several drug delivery and drug targeting systems are currently being developed. Targeting is an ability to direct the drug(s) to the desired site. There are two major mechanisms, viz., active and passive for drug targeting. Controlled drug release and subsequent biodegradation are also indispensable for developing successful formulations. Colloidal drug vehicles such as micelles, vesicles, liquid crystal dispersions, and nanomaterials consisting of miniscule nanoparticles of 5 - 200 nm diameter have shown great promise as drug delivery systems. In this context, past decades have witnessed certain major advancements. This review article emphasizes on these advances in the field of drug delivery systems.

Drug Delivery Vehicles, Nanoparticles, Colloidosomes, Dendrimers, Nanorobots

Prasad, P. , Pal, P. , Rao, D. , Shrivastav, T. and Ge, R. (2011) Bird’s Eye View on the Recent Advances in Drug Delivery Systems. Journal of Biomaterials and Nanobiotechnology, 2, 544-556. doi: 10.4236/jbnb.2011.225065.