Drug Delivery Systems [Paperback]

In this concise and systematic book, a team of experts select the most important, cutting-edge technologies used in drug delivery systems. They take into account significant drugs, new technologies such as nanoparticles, and therapeutic applications. The chapters present step-by-step laboratory protocols following the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, offering readily reproducible results vital for pharmaceutical physicians and scientists.

Drug delivery systems (DDS) are an important component of drug development and therapeutics. The field is quite extensive and requires an encyclopedia to describe all the technologies. The aim of this book is to put together descriptions of important selective technologies used in DDS. Important drugs, new technologies such as nanoparticles, as well as important therapeutic applications, are taken into consideration in this selection. This book will be an important source of information for pharmaceutical scientists and pharmacologists working in the academia as well as in the industry. It has useful information for pharmaceutical physicians and scientists in many disciplines involved in developing DDS such as chemical engineering, protein engineering, gene therap y, and so on. This will be an important reference for executives in charge of research and development at several hundred companies that are developing drug delivery technologies. Kewal K. Jain, MD v Contents Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix 1 Drug Delivery Systems  An Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Kewal K. Jain 2 The Role of the Adeno-Associated Virus Capsid in Gene Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Kim M. Van Vliet, Veronique Blouin, NicolÓ*