Abstract

Multi-morphologic polymer nano-assemblies, such as micelles and vesicles, have been intensively studied recently by scientists in the multidisciplinary fields for their promising applications in bioengineering, biomedicine and pharmaceutics. With the success of several micellar formulations in clinical trials, more and more therapeutics based on polymer assemblies are on the pipeline for clinical applications. The current review summarizes some recent patents on the polymer nano-assemblies including micelles and vesicles, with the focus on drug delivery and gene therapy. For the lack of updated patents, the selected progress made most recently in this field has been presented based on the newly published articles. The future development in this active and exciting field has been discussed as well. Because of the huge literature of scientific papers on delivery systems based on polymer assemblies in recent years, this review attempts to limit the specific examples to those that are currently in clinical trials. Accordingly, it is impossible to properly credit all the scientists in this field. The author apologizes in advance for all omissions.

Keywords: Self-assembly, polymeric assemblies, micelles, vesicles, polymersomes, drug delivery, gene delivery, nanomedicine