ABSTRACT
The therapy for human diseases using biomedical polymer has evoked a greater interest among researchers in bioengineering elds for its capacity for easy modications, low cytotoxicity, and wide variety. Especially, core-shell type polymeric micelles have been extensively investigated for drug delivery applications (Kataoka et al. 2001, Nishiyama and Kataoka 2003, Kim et al. 2007a,b). Since polymeric micelles are composed of hydrophobic inner core and hydrophilic outershell, they offer several advantages for drug delivery applications, including hydrophobic cores as a microreservoir of hydrophobic drugs, hydrophilic outershell as a defense layer against attack of the reticuloendothelial system (RES), long blood circulation of drug, and passive targeting against tumor (Thunemann et al. 2000, Kim et al. 2007a,b).
