Hydrogels in Drug Delivery

Hydrogels have been increasingly used in the development of novel formulations with application in a wide variety of therapeutic and monitoring purposes. Multidisciplinary work carried out by researchers working in synthetic chemistry, drug delivery, biomedicine and other fields led to the development of novel polymers enabling the preparation of hydrogels with adjustable physicochemical properties. Accordingly, these materials offer multiple advantages over other drug delivery systems, including an increased patient compliance by reducing the required number of medication doses, reducing the healing time in injuries, or simplifying patient monitoring by reducing the invasiveness of currently available methods. Hydrogels in drug delivery: Advances in the manufacture, characterization, and application of hydrogels to address current global healthcare challenges covers in a bottom-up approach a number of topics ranging from the basic chemistry of hydrogels to specific application of existent and novel hydrogels in controlled drug delivery and biomedicine. Covers the fundamental mechanisms of drug delivery from a hydrophilic matrixBreaks down interconnections between introductory and applied materials chaptersIncludes experimental pictures and links to multimedia features including videos and slides