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Review
. 2022 Jun;43(12):e2100892.
doi: 10.1002/marc.202100892. Epub 2022 Mar 7.

Shining Light on Polymeric Drug Nanocarriers with Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy

Sascha Schmitt  1 , Lutz Nuhn  1 , Matthias Barz  2 , Hans-Jürgen Butt  1 , Kaloian Koynov  1
Affiliations
Review

Shining Light on Polymeric Drug Nanocarriers with Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy

Sascha Schmitt et al. Macromol Rapid Commun. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

The use of nanoparticles as carriers is an extremely promising way for administration of therapeutic agents, such as drug molecules, proteins, and nucleic acids. Such nanocarriers (NCs) can increase the solubility of hydrophobic compounds, protect their cargo from the environment, and if properly functionalized, deliver it to specific target cells and tissues. Polymer-based NCs are especially promising, because they offer high degree of versatility and tunability. However, in order to get a full advantage of this therapeutic approach and develop efficient delivery systems, a careful characterization of the NCs is needed. This review highlights the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) technique as a powerful and versatile tool for NCs characterization at all stages of the drug delivery process. In particular, FCS can monitor and quantify the size of the NCs and the drug loading efficiency after preparation, the NCs stability and possible interactions with, e.g., plasma proteins in the blood stream and the kinetic of drug release in the cytoplasm of the target cells.

Keywords: drug delivery; fluorescence correlation spectroscopy; polymeric nanocarriers.

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