Biomacromolecules drug design

The field of pulmonary administration of biomacromolecules is just now in its infancy, and much promise is held in this field. By carefully examining the methods and types of delivery that are possible we may be able to better design easy to use and inexpensive methods for delivering biotechnology-derived products. This chapter was neither all-inclusive nor comprehensive, but was intended to be a starting point for the examination of pulmonary administration of biotechnology derived drugs. 

Biomacromolecule-Directed (Target-Specific) Drug Delivery Underlying Factors, Principles and Design Chemical Events in Neurotransmission ... 

Self-assanbled nanofibers can be designed to incorporate diverse chemical functionalities and thus may have a variety of applications for delivery of small drugs, biomacromolecules or imaging contrast agents (BuU et al., 2005 Guler et al., 2005). Electrospun continuous nanofibers are unique since they represent nanostructures in two dimensions and a macroscopic structures in another dimension (Fong et al., 1999 Dzenis, 2004). They are safer to manufacture than the carbon nanombes since there is less risk of air pollution. 

Another remarkable feature of responsive polymeric systems is that interactions on the molecular scale (the stimulus of some sort) lead to macroscopically detectable changes that are finally employed for the function (e.g., directed delivery of drugs). As the molecular-scale interactions and macroscopic function are so intimately linked it is noteworthy that rather few studies have dealt with the nanoscopic level of these materials. This may be due to the fact that many conventional methods of physical polymer characterization may simply not be able to resolve the many different, often counteracting interactions [18, 49, 50]. In processes like a response of any kind, solvent-polymer, solvent-solvent, and polymer-polymer interactions all play a cmcial role. Better understanding of the structure and interactions on the nanoscale is not only of value in itself but it may also shed light on similar processes in biomacromolecules and may aid the design and control of responsive polymers with respect to their applications [8, 48, 49]. These applications can be counted to the above-mentioned societal need of health, as responsive polymers are hot candidates for, e.g., drug or nucleic acid delivery purposes. 

Andrews, G. P. Jones, D. S. (2006). Rheological Characterization of Bioadhesive Binary Polymeric Systems Designed as Platforms for Drug Delivery Implants. Biomacromolecules, Vol. 7, pp. 899-906, ISSN 1525-7797... 

---