Abstract

HYDROGELS- A NOVEL A ND SMART DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM: AN UPDATED REVIEW

Ritesh Kumar*, Pawan Kumar Gautam, Amrish Chandra and Vijay Kumar Sharma

Abstract

The availability of large molecular weight protein and peptide-based d rugs due to the recent advances in the field of molecular biology has given us new ways to treat a number of diseases. Synthetic hydrogels offer a possibly effective and convenient way to administer these compounds. Hydrogels are hydrophilic, three-dimensional networks, which are able to imbibe large amounts of water or biological fluids and thus resemble to a large extent a biological tissue. Here we discuss recent progress in overcoming these challenges, particularly with regards to effectively delivering hydrogels inside the body without implantation, prolonging the release kinetics of drugs from hydrogels and expanding the nature of drugs which can be delivered using hydrogel-based approaches. Therefore, the precise account of hydrogel behaviour as well as mathematical description of equilibrium swelling, dimensional changes due to solvent uptake, desorption and drug release profiles were the main objectives in many investigations. The objective of this manuscript is to give a brief review on existing mathematical models and theories in the field of hydrogel swelling as well as the description of the drug release mechanism from swelling-controlled networks. The most important properties of hydrogels relevant to their swelling behaviour as well as kinetics and thermodynamic of swelling are also presented

Keywords: Hydrogels, swelling, diffusion, dimensional.