Molecular imprinted polymers as drug delivery vehicles

This review is aimed to discuss the molecular imprinted polymer (MIP)-based drug delivery systems (DDS). Molecular imprinted polymers have proved to possess the potential and also as a suitable material in several areas over a long period of time. However, only recently it has been employed for pharmaceuticals and biomedical applications, particularly as drug delivery vehicles due to properties including selective recognition generated from imprinting the desired analyte, favorable in harsh experimental conditions, and feedback-controlled recognitive drug release. Hence, this review will discuss their synthesis, the reason they are selected as drug delivery vehicles and for their applications in several drug administration routes (i.e. transdermal, ocular and gastrointestinal or stimuli-reactive routes).