Sustainable Nanotechnology

16 Eco‐friendly Natural Polymers‐based Nanotechnology

Twishi Puri¹ and Yashwant Pathak^2,3

¹ Department of Biology, Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA

² Taneja College of Pharmacy, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

³ Faculty of Pharmacy, Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia

16.1 Introduction

Drug delivery is perhaps one of the most important aspects of modern medicine since most of the medical treatments depend on the effective delivery of drugs to the target areas. Previously, drug delivery systems were based on synthetic polymers. Recently, however, the research on drug delivery has shifted its focus from conventional methods to biodegradable and biocompatible polymers. This is because natural polymers have various advantages over synthetic polymers. Such advantages include their intrinsic property of environmental responsiveness, no toxicity, and the ability to be easily modified in or incorporated in oral delivery and bolus matrix delivery systems. Additionally, nanoscale polymer particles have successfully been applied to oral and intramuscular delivery systems for nonviral gene therapy [1].

There are several advantages of polymeric nanoparticles in terms of their use in drug delivery. For instance, they have the ability to increase the stability of volatile drugs, can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the traditional oral and intravenous methods of drug administration, and can deliver a higher concentration of drug to the target location ...