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Another type of material being developed for drug delivery is the so-called intelligent biomaterials. Such materials would combine molecular recognition with drug release. Nicholas A. Peppas, a chemical engineering professor at Purdue University, believes that such a strategy represents the future of drug delivery. Peppas will soon be moving to the chemical and biomedical engineering departments at the University of Texas, Austin, to head a new initiative in this field. In his vision, the recognition of a particular agent in the body--desirable or undesirable--would trigger the release of a therapeutic agent. Achieving this would result in a "new generation of drug delivery systems," he says. Peppas and his group make polymers capable of recognizing certain compounds by using the technique of molecular imprinting, which is more often associated with chromatography. The molecule that the polymer will sense is used as a template around which the monomers are allowed to polymerize. The template molecule is then extracted from the polymer. "WHAT IS LEFT behind are nanopores or micropores that hopefully remember only the specific template," Peppas says. "For example, in the case of glucose, if I prepare a solution of glucose, sucrose, and galactose, this particular compound would recognize only the glucose. We've come close, but we're not at 100% recognition." In the example of glucose-sensing molecularly imprinted nanoparticles, Peppas hopes that the detection of glucose would trigger the release of insulin from within the particle. "I'm describing to you something futuristic," Peppas tells C&EN, "something that is more or less like science fiction but is not 100% science fiction because we're already working on parts of it." These are just a few examples of the work that materials scientists are doing to develop new polymers to effectively deliver drugs. As drugs become larger and less water soluble, the importance of new delivery systems will only increase. |
| UPDATE | 08.02 |
| AUTHOR | Purdue Uni.'s Peppas Nicholas A. |
| LITERATURE REF. | This data is not available for free |
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