Polymer Chemistry

Polymers in Medicine

In a traditional pharmaceutics area, such as tablet manufacturing, polymers are used as tablet binders to bind the excipients of the tablet. Modern or advanced pharmaceutical dosage forms utilize polymers for drug protection, taste masking, controlled release of a given drug, targeted delivery, increase drug bioavailability, and so on and so forth.  Polymers have found application in liquid dosage forms as rheology modifiers.They are used to control the viscosity of an aqueous solution or to stabilize suspensions or even for the granulation step in preparation of solid dosage forms. Major application of polymers in current pharmaceutical field is for controlled drug release. In the biomedical area, polymers are generally used as implants and are expected to perform long-term service. This requires that the polymers have unique properties that are not offered by polymers intended for general applications. In general, the desirable polymer properties in pharmaceutical applications are film forming (coating), thickening (rheology modifier), gelling (controlled release), adhesion (binding), pH-dependent solubility (controlled release), solubility in organic solvents (taste masking), and barrier properties (protection and packaging).