pH‐Responsive Drug‐Delivery Systems

In many biomedical applications, drugs need to be delivered in response to the pH value in the body. In fact, it is desirable if the drugs can be administered in a controlled manner that precisely matches physiological needs at targeted sites and at predetermined release rates for predefined periods of time. Different organs, tissues, and cellular compartments have different pH values, which makes the pH value a suitable stimulus for controlled drug release. pH-Responsive drug-delivery systems have attracted more and more interest as "smart" drug-delivery systems for overcoming the shortcomings of conventional drug formulations because they are able to deliver drugs in a controlled manner at a specific site and time, which results in high therapeutic efficacy. This focus review is not intended to offer a comprehensive review on the research devoted to pH-responsive drug-delivery systems; instead, it presents some recent progress obtained for pH-responsive drug-delivery systems and future perspectives. There are a large number of publications available on this topic, but only a selection of examples will be discussed.