Block copolymer micelles as vehicles for drug delivery

Abstract There is a wide-spread consensus that characteristics of drug vehicles determine the applicability of the site-specific delivery of drugs. This article focused on the promising features of block copolymer micelles as drug vehicles mimicking the natural carrier-systems with supramolecular structures (i.e. viruses and lipoproteins). Considerable discussions are made on the physicochemical characteristics of polymeric micelles in aqueous milieu with shedding light on earlier works done in the field. Advantageous features of polymeric micelles as drug vehicles are summarized as: (1) formation of environmentally-separated microcontainer of drugs through supramolecular assemblage, (2) installation of anchoring moiety on the surface, (3) duration in the biological compartment and (4) programmable chronological stability. Then, our recent work concerning polymeric micelles with anti-tumor activity is presented to demonstrate these advantageous features of polymeric micelles. Worth noticing is that higher anti-tumor activity was achieved by adriamycin-conjugated micelles compared with parental adriamycin, indicating that a considerable improvement in cancer chemotherapy is feasible by the use of appropriate vehicle systems.

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