Figure 1. There is an increasing demand for contemporary drug delivery platforms to be multifunctional, that is, to simultaneously: i) deliver the drug smartly, at the optimal rate and amount over prolonged periods of time and in feedback with the characteristics of the local microenvironment; ii) preserve the drug’s bioactivity in the biological milieu; iii) contribute to tissue regeneration; iv) promote targeting of the right location at the cellular or subcellular level; and v) act as traceable sensors to serve a diagnostic purpose in real time.

Some of the sophisticated material structures intensely researched for such applications include soft, hard and composite nano- and microparticles, thin films and surface coatings, organic meshes, micelles and vesicles, and microfabricated patterns.