Advancing Drug Delivery to Articular Cartilage: From Single to Multiple Strategies

Overview

Journal Acta Pharm Sin B

Publisher Elsevier

Specialty Pharmacology

Date 2023 Oct 6

PMID 37799383

Authors

Tianyuan Zhao

Xu Li

Hao Li

Haoyuan Deng

Jianwei Li

Zhen Yang

Songlin He

Shuangpeng Jiang

Xiang Sui

Quanyi Guo

Shuyun Liu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Articular cartilage (AC) injuries often lead to cartilage degeneration and may ultimately result in osteoarthritis (OA) due to the limited self-repair ability. To date, numerous intra-articular delivery systems carrying various therapeutic agents have been developed to improve therapeutic localization and retention, optimize controlled drug release profiles and target different pathological processes. Due to the complex and multifactorial characteristics of cartilage injury pathology and heterogeneity of the cartilage structure deposited within a dense matrix, delivery systems loaded with a single therapeutic agent are hindered from reaching multiple targets in a spatiotemporal matched manner and thus fail to mimic the natural processes of biosynthesis, compromising the goal of full cartilage regeneration. Emerging evidence highlights the importance of sequential delivery strategies targeting multiple pathological processes. In this review, we first summarize the current status and progress achieved in single-drug delivery strategies for the treatment of AC diseases. Subsequently, we focus mainly on advances in multiple drug delivery applications, including sequential release formulations targeting various pathological processes, synergistic targeting of the same pathological process, the spatial distribution in multiple tissues, and heterogeneous regeneration. We hope that this review will inspire the rational design of intra-articular drug delivery systems (DDSs) in the future.

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