Polyacrylic acid mediated targeted drug delivery nano-systems: A review

Hydrogels play a crucial role in medical-related research, such as biomedical devices, scaffold materials, etc. Convenience in controlling for any desired application makes them excellent materials to apply in biomedical fields, such as drug delivery systems. Polyacrylic acid (PAA) is one of the substantial polymers that has grabbed attention as a mediated component due to its extraordinary properties, such as biodegradability. Moreover, due to having carboxylic acid functional group, it is sensitive to pH. This makes PAA a suitable polymer for drug delivery systems, especially oral drug delivery which deals with diverse pH environments in gastrointestinal tract. Additionally, pH-sensitivity feature is highly applicable in cancer therapy due to the acidic environment of the tumor cell. Therefore, PAA could be utilized in this field of medicine. In general, the potential and importance of PAA has led to conduction of heavy research for determining its biomedical potential. This review's chief goal is to shed light on several target-specific carriers that are based on PAA and its derivatives. Firstly, the review is concerned with the formation and properties of PAA, followed by the organ-specific delivery systems consisting of PAA and its derivatives. The following section reviews the recent developments of PAA-contained drug carriers for cancer therapy.