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  • Review Article
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The evolution of commercial drug delivery technologies

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 5, pages 951–967 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Drug delivery technologies have enabled the development of many pharmaceutical products that improve patient health by enhancing the delivery of a therapeutic to its target site, minimizing off-target accumulation and facilitating patient compliance. As therapeutic modalities expanded beyond small molecules to include nucleic acids, peptides, proteins and antibodies, drug delivery technologies were adapted to address the challenges that emerged. In this Review Article, we discuss seminal approaches that led to the development of successful therapeutic products involving small molecules and macromolecules, identify three drug delivery paradigms that form the basis of contemporary drug delivery and discuss how they have aided the initial clinical successes of each class of therapeutic. We also outline how the paradigms will contribute to the delivery of live-cell therapies.

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Fig. 1: Classes of therapeutic and delivery paradigms.
Fig. 2: Delivery systems integrating drug modifications and environmental modifications.

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Acknowledgements

A.M.V. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant number DGE-1650116. S.M. acknowledges support from the National Institutes of Health (1R01HL143806-01), the Department of Defense Medical Research and Development Program (W81XWH-19-2-0011) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (HDTRA1-15-1-0045). This publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number R35GM137898 (to A.C.A.). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Ava M. Vargason & Aaron C. Anselmo

  2. John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Samir Mitragotri

  3. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Samir Mitragotri

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  1. Ava M. Vargason
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  2. Aaron C. Anselmo
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  3. Samir Mitragotri
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All authors contributed to the discussion of the contents, and reviewed and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Aaron C. Anselmo or Samir Mitragotri.

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Competing interests

S.M. is a shareholder, advisor and board member of companies working in drug delivery. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Biomedical Engineering thanks Twan Lammers and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Vargason, A.M., Anselmo, A.C. & Mitragotri, S. The evolution of commercial drug delivery technologies. Nat Biomed Eng 5, 951–967 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00698-w

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