Abstract
Recently, nanomaterials constructed by molecular self-assembly have gathered much attention to develop nano-devices incorporated with many types of drugs. Particularly, hollow capsules are one of promising materials, and recently, we have developed polyion complex vesicles, PICsomes, as novel polymeric vesicles. The most advantageous feature of PICsomes is its simple preparation process: Typically, they can be prepared by simple mixing of oppositely charged block copolymers consisting of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and charged poly(amino acid)s in an aqueous medium. Moreover, many other unique properties of PICsomes have been reported, such as facile tuning of vesicle sizes ranging from 100-400 nm while keeping monodispersed size distribution, semipermeable vesicle membrane, facile loading of various water-dispersed materials, long blood circulation after crosslinking, excellent tumor accumulation based on the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, and so on. The present review article describes basic design and synthetic strategy of PICsomes, fundamental properties of PICsomes, and recent applications of PICsomes to drug delivery system.
