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. 2018 Oct;11(10):4985-4998.
doi: 10.1007/s12274-018-2152-3. Epub 2018 Aug 1.

Strategies to improve micelle stability for drug delivery

Yang Lu  1 , Ershuai Zhang  1 , Jianhai Yang  1 , Zhiqiang Cao  1
Affiliations

Strategies to improve micelle stability for drug delivery

Yang Lu et al. Nano Res. 2018 Oct.

Abstract

Micelles have been studied as drug delivery carriers for decades. Their use can potentially result in high drug accumulation at the target site through the enhanced permeability and retention effect. Nevertheless, the lack of stability of micelles in the physiological environment limits their efficacy as a drug carrier. In particular, micelles tend to disassociate and prematurely release the encapsulated drugs, lowering delivery efficacy and creating toxicity concerns. Many efforts to enhance the stability of micelles have focused mainly on decreasing the critical micelle forming concentration and improving blood circulation. Herein, we review different strategies including crosslinking and non-crosslinking approaches designed to stabilize micelles and offer perspectives on future research directions.

Keywords: Micelle; critical micelle concentration (CMC); crosslinking; drug delivery; stability.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Illustration of micelles assembled from AB diblock copolymers and ABC triblock copolymers
Figure 2
Figure 2
Formation of polyion micelles (a) Polyion complex micelle formation from diblock copolymers. (b) Scheme of polymeric micelle with crosslinked ionic cores. Copyright © 2005 American Chemical Society[103].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Illustration of the topology effect on the stability of micelles.[110] Copyright © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2017
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
A schematic illustration of a unimolecular micelle nanoparticle made of the multi-arm, hyperbranched, star amphiphilic block copolymer, H40-BPLP-PEG-cRGD[120] Copyright©, 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Ultra-low-CMC micelles and their unusual ability to stabilize cargoes in extremely diluted conditions with micelle concentrations far below CMCs of common micelles [121] Conventional micelles dissociate at a concentration below CMC, and thus cannot stabilize a hydrophobic cargo at that concentration. Polar groups of conventional micelles were either non-ionic (e.g., Polysorbate 80, which is hydrophobic) or only contained one ionic group (e.g., sodium dodecyl sulfate). For zwitterionic micelles, as shown, the polar groups contained multiple zwitterionic moieties to form a polymer. Copyright © 2018, Springer Nature
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