Abstract

ROJAS CORTES, Manuel Guillermo; VALLEJO DIAZ, Bibiana Margarita  and  PERILLA, Jairo Ernesto. Biopolymers as materials for product development in pharmaceutical applications and biomedical uses. Ing. Investig. [online]. 2008, vol.28, n.1, pp.57-71. ISSN 0120-5609.

Biopolymers have been widely studied for pharmaceutics applications. They have been used to modified drug release, localize a drug toward its therapeutic target, penetrate physiological barriers (tisular and cells), and protect unstable therapeutic agents in a less invasive administration route. Thus, it is notorious the importance of biopolymers in the design of new biomedical devices, especially when is necessary to incorporate a pharmaceutical substance in the polymer matrix. Therefore, a new generation of alternatives for human health has been generated, by approaching the design to the concept "integrated product design to size". This document shows a review about the trends of the use of biopolymers for the design of products with pharmaceutical and biomedical applications. Also, the paper introduces the elements that should be mastered by engineers in order to get a material which can be used in the health field, and is a reference for the state of the art of this topic.

Keywords : biopolymers; modify release; therapeutic system; biomedical devices.

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