Morphologies and functionalities of polymeric nanocarriers as chemical tools for drug delivery: A review

In these years a variety of polymeric nanocarriers such as dendrimers, polymeric micelles, nanoparticles, nanogels, nanocapsules and vesicles are widely investigated as potential drug delivery systems. In addition to the different morphologies and sizes, these carriers may have on their surfaces specific functionalizations to improve the drug loading and controlled release and specific ligands for cell receptors, in order to achieve a precise targeting. This review focuses on recent functionalized polymeric nanomaterials used as drug delivery systems, with an emphasis on morphology and surface modifications of polymeric nanocarriers to improve controlled drug delivery. Moreover, this work offers a number of suggestions on how to achieve the systematization of data on the most relevant physico-chemical parameters, which govern and control the interaction between carrier and drug, with the aim to give the reader an overview of the most significant advances in this field.