Nanopharmacy: Exploratory Methods for Polymeric Materials

This chapter outlines the developing applications for polymeric materials in nanopharmacy and pharmaceutical science, and some of the opportunities for, and also barriers against, the use of macromolecules and conjugates as therapeutics. It is also important to consider some recent routes by which polymers can be made to controlled chain lengths and molar mass distributions, and to evaluate how the physicochemical behavior of polymers and conjugates affect their biological properties and their function as nanomedicines. Nanomedicines are often considered to be an advanced drug delivery system. Polymers represent an important category of materials from which nanomedicines can be created and they are an intense focus of current research, owing to the ease by which structures can be designed to perform specific functions. Recent advances in controlled radical polymerization (CRP) are allowing for the fabrication of polymers with much better characteristics compared to the conventional free radical polymer synthesis routes.