CHAPTER 2: Materials and Chemistry of Stimuli-responsive Drug Delivery Systems

Nanomaterials as a drug delivery platform have received a great deal of interest and the research has picked up momentum in the last decade. In particular, stimuli-responsive nanosystems provide the advantage of not only being target-specific but also less cytotoxic. This chapter deals with some of the chemistry behind how these smart materials are encoded to interact with their environment in a predetermined fashion. Three basic stimuli are identified: physical, chemical and biological. A representative set of stimuli are identified and the chemistry of the response is discussed based on the specific stimulus.