Polysaccharide-Based Drug Carriers—A Patent Analysis

Abstract

Polysaccharide-based carriers as biomaterials for drug delivery have been inspiring scientists for years due to their exceptional characteristics, such as nontoxicity, biocompatibility, and degradability, as they are able to protect pharmaceutically active molecules and provide their controlled/modified release. This review focuses on selected drug delivery systems based on natural polymers, namely fucoidan, pullulan, dextran, and pectin, with the aim of highlighting published patent documents. The information contained in patents is very important because it is usually not published in any other document and is much less discussed as the state of the art in the scientific literature. The Espacenet-European Patent Office database and the International Patent Classification were used for the research to highlight the specific search procedure. The presented analysis of the innovative state of the art includes an overview from the first patent applications to the latest granted patents in this field.