ABSTRACT
Conventional micelles, which are formed by the aggregation of individual amphiphilic molecules, have garnered great interest in the field of drug delivery, because their contrasting internal and external environments allow them to act as nanocarriers, shielding the encapsulated drug and altering its solubility. These micelles, however, have limitations because of their thermodynamic instability (due to disaggregation upon dilution below the critical micelle concentration) and low drug loading. An alternative approach is to prepare “micelle‐like” structures in which the amphiphilic units are covalently bound together to form single, stable molecules. Such unimolecular micelles were first prepared and characterized in the mid‐1980s. Since that time, unimolecular micelles have been prepared from several macromolecular architectures, such as dendrimers, star polymers, and hyperbranched polymers, and their properties and host–guest capabilities explored.
