Nanomedicines—A Scientific Toy or an Emerging Market?

Abstract

In recent years, significant effort has been made in the development and synthesis of polymer nanoparticles for the targeted delivery of drugs. Although many of these nanocarriers have attracted the attention of the pharmaceutical industry, only a few of them have been approved so far. The growing knowledge of their interactions with biological surfaces enables an adoption of the unique properties of the nanoparticle to the physiological environment. The following section describes the criteria that need to be considered for the development and optimization of these versatile drug delivery systems and the requirements for their translation into novel nanomedicines .