Stimuli-responsive “smart

Oishi M, Nagasaki Y (2010) Stimuli-responsive smart nanogels for cancer diagnostics and therapy. Nanomedicine (Lond) 5 451 -68... 

STIMULI-RESPONSIVE SMART ORGANIC HYBRID METAL NANOPARTICLES... 

Materials that show a shape-memory effect can be deformed into a temporary shape and afterwards they can recover their original shape on exposnre to an external stimulus [65,66]. Shape-memory polymers (SMPs) are stimuli-responsive smart polymers that have dual shape, which responds to application of an external stimulus. SMP is conventionally processed to receive its permanent shape. Afterward, the polymer is deformed and the intended temporary shape is fixed [67,68]. This process is called programming. These polymers basically consist of two phases, fixed points or frozen... 

After Gerhard Wegner had left Freiburg to become the co-founder and director of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Heino Finkelmann joined the Institute in 1984. In his research, Heino Finkelmann successfully combined the anisotropy of liquid crystals with the viscoelasticity of polymers [26]. This led him to the discovery of new generations of liquid crystalline elastomers, tunable lasers, and stimuli-responsive smart macromolecular materials. 

Overall, stimuli-responsive, smart nanocarriers are a very important emerging area of drug delivery. Those most commonly studied involve endogenous stimuli (pH, enzymes and redox potential), which take advantage of specific conditions that exist intraceUularly or in the microenvironment of the disease site, enabling selective drug release. 

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