Enhancing Drug Function.

DRUG delivery systems; DRUG development; MICELLES

From an aesthetic perspective, it is attractive to build all desirable pharmacological features of a drug — such as solubility, stability, permeability to biological membranes, and targeting to particular tissues, cells, and intracellular compartments — into the drug molecule itself. Earlier researches suggested that this could be accomplished by associating the drug with a polymeric carrier and designing various domains of the polymer to obtain the desired pharmacological features. Micelles are particularly attractive for drug delivery, because they do not require the chemical identity of the drug to be changed. Administration of micelle-incorporated drugs achieves several positive effects at once. On the level of the whole body, the drug is solubilized, avoiding use of the hydrophobic carriers usually used to deliver the drugs.