Biodegradable polymers as drug carrier systems

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the area of drug discovery, facilitated by novel technologies such as combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening. These novel approaches have led to drugs, which are generally more potent and have poorer solubility than the drugs developed from traditional approaches of medicinal chemistry. The development of these complex drugs has triggered a more urgent focus on developing novel techniques to deliver these drugs more effectively and efficiently (Molinari 2009; Shanmugasundaram and Rigby 2009; Yi Mok et al. 2009). Secondly, there is a continuous advance in biotechnology and drug development which produces more pharmaceutically active agents that will be difficult to administer by conventional means (Shire 2009). Thus, there is an increased demand for controlled or site-specific delivery system, which thereby needs a material, i.e., biomaterial, to deliver the drug and to perform its intended work.