The field of drug delivery and controlled release is a fast developing multidisciplinary research area on the adge of Physics, Biology and Chemistry. It is focused basically around the following questions:

Drug targeting: the delivery of a particular active component to a specific place without affecting other sites in the human body. Targeting may result in serious decrease of the administrated doses, thus decrease of the overall toxicity of the product as well as the decrease of the side effects. Targets could be either specific receptors on cell membranes or local zones of extreme physiological conditions: temperature, pH, etc. In fact, external physiological conditions can induce the conformational changes in the polymer material which can lead to the release of the drug. Polymeric materials used as drug carriers usually have high molecular masses. This gives an additional opportunity to use them for targeting: blood vessels in inflamed or tumor tissues have enhanced permeability for large particles. Polymeric micelles, single chains or parts of gels can penetrate and accumulate in the inflamed or tumor tissues.

Stealth technologies aiming at hiding the product from the immune system, thus avoiding an immune reaction. Vesicles, block copolymer micelles or nanoparticles covered with PEO chains have lower immune response due to steric repulsion of PEO chains in the outer layer with proteins.

Controlled release: the release of the drug can be modulated with time: it can decrease with time, can be stable during long periods or can be cyclic. The ability to predefine the temporal rate of the release of the drug allows eliminating under- and overdosing: common shortcomings of the traditional administration. The use of degradable polymer materials provides more control of the release rates: the degradation of polymer matrix may last for weeks providing stable release of the component. All these purposes of controlled drug delivery can be achieved with the use of tailor-made polymeric and, in general, soft-matter structures such as block copolymer micelles, polymer gels, polysoaps, vesicles, etc. The formulation and synthesis of these objects are well developed, however the theory of drug carriers or prodrugs is almost inexistent.

The aim of this resource is to collect information about the field and show the possible ways of solving this complex problem.

• Vladimir Baulin
• Nigel Slater
• Jens-Uwe Sommer
• Jian R. Lu
• Thomas Heimburg
• Rongjun Chen
• Carlos Marques

• Molecular Simulation group, Tarragona Spain
• BioScience Engineering Group, Cambridge, UK
• Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research, Dresden, Germany
• ICS Institut Charles Sadron, Strasbourg, France
• University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
• Biomedical and Health Research Centre, Leeds, UK
• Membrane Biophysics Group, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Vivamer LTD, UK
• Institut de Biomolécules, Montpellier, France
• Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques, Paris II, France