title: Towards soft robotic devices for site-specific drug delivery.
abstract: Considerable research efforts have recently been dedicated to the establishment of various drug delivery systems (DDS) that are mechanical/physical, chemical and biological/molecular DDS. In this paper, we report on the recent advances in site-specific drug delivery (site-specific, controlled, targeted or smart drug delivery are terms used interchangeably in the literature, to mean to transport a drug or a therapeutic agent to a desired location within the body and release it as desired with negligibly small toxicity and side effect compared to classical drug administration means such as peroral, parenteral, transmucosal, topical and inhalation) based on mechanical/physical systems consisting of implantable and robotic drug delivery systems. While we specifically focus on the robotic or autonomous DDS, which can be reprogrammable and provide multiple doses of a drug at a required time and rate, we briefly cover the implanted DDS, which are well-developed relative to the robotic DDS, to highlight the design and performance requirements, and investigate issues associated with the robotic DDS. Critical research issues associated with both DDSs are presented to describe the research challenges ahead of us in order to establish soft robotic devices for clinical and biomedical applications.
authors.affiliation: a 1 School of Mechanical, Materials and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Wollongong , 2522 NSW, Australia.|b 2 ARC Center of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong , 2522 NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Gursel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Alici
mesh_terms: D004337:Drug Carriers / Q000737:chemistry; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D006801:Humans; D060328:Magnetic Phenomena; D019736:Prostheses and Implants; D012371:Robotics
chemical_list: D004337:Drug Carriers
keywords: capsule endoscope; gastrointestinal tract; magnetic drug carriers; robotic capsules; robotic drug delivery systems; site-specific drug delivery; soft robotics