Encapsulation Techniques Applied to Pharmaceutics

Dear Colleagues,

Advances in drug discovery have led to the requirement of developing more specialized and targeted delivery systems for highly potent and target-specific drug candidates. Despite showing great promise during early-stage development, many of these candidates often fail during preclinical and clinical stages due to challenges associated with effective drug delivery. For small molecules, factors such as poor stability and solubility are often a hindrance to successful product development, while large molecules such as peptides and proteins face the problem of maintaining their therapeutic efficacy until delivered at the site of action. Additionally, with the emergence of nanotechnology, better targeted and site-specific drug delivery systems have been developed to promote the accumulation of drugs at target sites while avoiding undesirable systemic side-effects. Encapsulation is one of the promising drug delivery strategies to tackle some of these difficult issues. Emerging encapsulation technologies have tailored encapsulated products to achieve very specific roles, ranging from targeted drug delivery to controlled drug release. For oral delivery systems, with the aims of taste masking, target specificity or controlled release, there is a need for better coating media and techniques, especially for encapsulating smaller particles, which can be challenging.   

This Special Issue serves to capture the advances and innovations in encapsulation technologies, and the use of encapsulation for drug delivery. In particular, this issue will also highlight the progress in the preparation and characterization encapsulated drug particles, as well as its application in pharmacotherapy.

Prof. Dr. Paul W S Heng
Dr. Tze Ning Hiew
Guest Editors

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