Nanocarriers Prepared from Cationic Polymers

Nanoparticles are colloidal and submicron particles generally having 10-500 nm particle size and prepared from different polymers for drug carrier systems. Drug molecules are encapsulated in nanoparticles by several methods or adsorbed on the surface of nanoparticles by electrostatic interactions.  

Encapsulated Drug Oily or Aqueous Core Polymer Matrix 

Cationic lipids and polymers interact and self-assemble with anionic nucleic acids in the form of complexes, named lipoplexes and polyplexes, respectively. Polyplexes are nanoscale complexes obtained by cationic polymers and 

In the literature, two methods are often used to prepare cationic polymer-DNA complexes. The first method is direct mixing, which is generally used to formulate traditional polyplexes. According to this method, aqueous suspensions of cationic polymers and plasmid DNA are mixed rapidly. The other method is the detergent dialysis method, which was initially used for preparing relatively stable cationic lipid-DNA particles. For this method, a DNA and cationic lipid mixture is dissolved in a detergent solution, which is followed by a subsequent dialysis process to remove the detergent. 

Polyplexes are formed from many cationic polymers such as histones, PEI, dendrimers (pDMAEM) or carbohydrate-based polymers such as chitosan and cyclodextrin. Polyplexes are smaller in size than lipoplexes, which is a major physicochemical property for gene delivery, especially in vivoJ 

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Cationic nanocarriers are prepared from natural or synthetic polymers. The most widely used cationic polymers have been reported as PEI, PLL, poly-methacrylates (PMA), chitosan and cationic modifications of other polymers such as cyclodextrin, gelatin and imidazole-containing polymers. ... 

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