Sustained Release Systems for Delivery of Therapeutic Peptide/Protein

Peptide/protein therapeutics have been significantly applied in the clinical treatment of various diseases such as cancer, diabetes, etc. owing to their high biocompatibility, specificity, and therapeutic efficacy. However, due to their immunogenicity, instability stemming from its complex tertiary and quaternary structure, vulnerability to enzyme degradation, and rapid renal clearance, the clinical application of protein/peptide therapeutics is significantly confined. Though nanotechnology has been demonstrated to prevent enzyme degradation of the protein therapeutics and thus enhance the half-life, issues such as initial burst release and uncontrollable release kinetics are still unsolved. Moreover, the traditional administration method results in poor patient compliance, limiting the clinical application of protein/peptide therapeutics. Exploiting the sustained-release formulations for more controllable delivery of protein/peptide therapeutics to decrease the frequency of injection and enhance patient compliance is thus greatly meaningful. In this review, we comprehensively summarize the substantial advancements of protein/peptide sustained-release systems in the past decades. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of all these sustained-release systems in clinical application together with their future challenges are also discussed in this review.