Hydrogels for Hydrophobic Drug Delivery. Classification, Synthesis and Applications

E. Larrañeta, S. Stewart, M. Ervine, R. Al-Kasasbeh, R. F. Donnelly

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

229 Citations (Scopus)
892 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Hydrogels have been shown to be very useful in the field of drug delivery due to their high biocompatibility and ability to sustain delivery. Therefore, the tuning of their properties should be the focus of study to optimise their potential. Hydrogels have been generally limited to the delivery of hydrophilic drugs. However, as many of the new drugs coming to market are hydrophobic in nature, new approaches for integrating hydrophobic drugs into hydrogels should be developed. This article discusses the possible new ways to incorporate hydrophobic drugs within hydrogel structures that have been developed through research. This review describes hydrogel-based systems for hydrophobic compound delivery included in the literature. The section covers all the main types of hydrogels, including physical hydrogels and chemical hydrogels. Additionally, reported applications of these hydrogels are described in the subsequent sections.
Original languageEnglish
Article number13
Pages (from-to)1-20
JournalJournal of Functional Biomaterials
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Jan 2018

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