Chemical Delivery Systems (Polymeric Prodrugs)

Pharmaceutical Polymers: Polymers are used widely in pharmaceutical systems as:
?Suspending and emulsifying agents
?Flocculating agents
?Adhesives
?Packaging and coating materials
?Controlled and site-specific drug delivery systems

Definitions
Polymers are substances of high molecular weight made up of repeating monomer units.
Substances with short chains containing relatively few monomers are called oligomers.
Polymers owe their unique properties to their size, their three-dimensional shape and sometimes to their asymmetry.
The chemical reactivity of polymers depends on the chemistry of their monomer units, but their properties depend to a large extent on the way the monomers are put together; it is this fact that leads to the versatility of synthetic polymers.


Dendrimers
?Dendrimers are highly branched polymer constructs formed from a central core which defines their initial geometry.
?Their branchlike structure leads to spheres which in higher generations appear to be the size of micelles and ultimately nanospheres of small dimensions.
?They can be functionalised and in this way ‘layered’ systems can be formed by using different monomers for succeeding reactions (generations); such chemical architecture has virtually no bounds. Dendrons are partial dendrimers.
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