A Summary of Electrospun Nanofibers as Drug Delivery System: Drugs Loaded and Biopolymers Used as Matrices

Abstract

Recently, electrospun polymeric nanofibers have proven to be an interesting strategy for drug delivery systems application. The high surface-to-volume ratio of the fibers can improve some processes, such as cell binding and proliferation, drug loading, and mass transfer processes. One of the most important and studied areas of electrospinning is in the drug delivery field, for the controlled release of active substances ranging from antibiotics and anticancer agents to macromolecules such as proteins and DNA. The advantage of this method is that a wide variety of low solubility drugs can be loaded into the fibers to improve their bioavailability or to attain controlled release. This review presents an overview of the reported drugs loaded into polymeric nanofibers, to be used as drug delivery systems. For instance, it presents the reports on drugs with different bioactivities such as antiinflammatory, anti-microbial, anticancer, cardiovascular, anti-histamine, gastrointestinal, palliative and contraceptive drugs, etc. It also analyzes the electrospinning techniques used in each system, as well as the polymers used as matrices for the preparation of the nanofibers; unfolding the advantages of electrospun polymeric nanofibers over other drug delivery systems. This review intends to enlist and summarize the reported literature concerning this topic. In addition, it proposes future research in the field.

Keywords: Biopolymers; controlled release; drug release; electrospinning; fast release; nanofibers..