Natural and Synthetic Polymers as Drug Carriers for Delivery of Therapeutic Proteins

Abstract

In order to cure and treat health-related disorders, therapeutic substance must reach its target site with a constant concentration over a long period of time. As oral administration is limited due to enzymatic degradation, most of the commercially available therapeutic proteins are usually being administered parenterally. However, because of their short biological half-life, daily multiple injections are required to maintain effective therapeutic levels of these drug candidates. To limit this drawback, a variety of polymers are being used to increase systemic bioavailability of therapeutic proteins and peptides. Development of protein-based therapeutic substances has tremendously increased the need for suitable polymeric-based carrier systems, guaranteeing safe and sustained delivery of therapeutic proteins to their target site. Here, we have briefly discussed two major types of polymers including natural and synthetic polymers that have been intensively studied for efficient delivery of various proteinous drugs. A wide variety of natural and/or synthetic polymers have been found to be useful and safe drug carrier systems for the delivery of therapeutic proteins which have been discussed over here in detail. To conclude, these polymers have been found to be compatible with most of the incorporated proteins and have shown to have minimal or no toxic profile.

Keywords:

• Natural polymers
• polysaccharide-based polymers
• natural protein-based polymers
• synthetic polymers
• recombinant protein-based polymers
• therapeutic proteins

Funding

The authors are thankful to the Science and Technology Development of Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant # 2012Z×09506001-004) for financial support. The first two authors also acknowledge the CSC, China for providing the scholarships for PhD studies and HEC, Pakistan for partial support for their PhD studies.