Soft robot-enabled controlled release of oral drug formulations.

Journal: Soft matter
Published Date:

Abstract

The creation of highly effective oral drug delivery systems (ODDSs) has long been the main objective of pharmaceutical research. Multidisciplinary efforts involving materials, electronics, control, and pharmaceutical sciences encourage the development of robot-enabled ODDSs. Compared with conventional rigid robots, soft robots potentially offer better mechanical compliance and biocompatibility with biological tissues, more versatile shape control and maneuverability, and multifunctionality. In this paper, we first describe and highlight the importance of manipulating drug release kinetics, pharmaceutical kinetics. We then introduce an overview of state-of-the-art soft robot-based ODDSs comprising resident, shape-programming, locomotive, and integrated soft robots. Finally, the challenges and outlook regarding future soft robot-based ODDS development are discussed.

Authors

  • Hao Huang
    School of Information Science and Engineering, Xinjiang University, Shangli Road, Urumqi 830046, China.
  • Yidan Lyu
    College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China. knan@zju.edu.cn.
  • Kewang Nan
    College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China. knan@zju.edu.cn.