Artificial Intelligence Assisted Design and Optimization of Nanosponges for Targeted Drug Delivery

Authors

  • Pranita Waghmare Department of Pharmaceutics Shivlingeshwar College of Pharmacy, Almala.
  • Sameer Shafi Department of Pharmaceutics Shivlingeshwar College of Pharmacy, Almala.
  • Shivlila Swami Department of Pharmaceutics Shivlingeshwar College of Pharmacy, Almala.
  • Madhuri Damane Department of Pharmaceutics Shivlingeshwar College of Pharmacy, Almala.
  • Ankita Gadhave Department of Pharmaceutics Shivlingeshwar College of Pharmacy, Almala.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22270/ajprd.v14i3.1803

Abstract

Pharmaceutical technology has been revolutionized by the new nanotechnology, with the emergence of novel nanocarrier systems for targeted drug delivery systems and controlled drug delivery. Nanoporous systems, such as nanosponges, have been shown to be promising candidates for nanoporous carriers due to their high surface area, tunable porosity, biocompatibility and potential to encapsulate hydrophilic and hydrophobic therapeutic agents. In biomedical applications nanosponges are used to increase the solubility, stability, bioavailaility and controlled release of drugs to improve their therapeutic efficacy. But the conventional method of preparing nanosponge (NS) is largely based on trial-and-error experimentation, which is time consuming, labor intensive and expensive. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has proven to be a gamechanger in the field of pharmaceutical formulation, offering a range of predictive modeling, machine learning, deep learning, molecular simulations, and intelligent optimization techniques that can expedite the formulation development process. With the assistance of AI, NS engineering can be integrated to rationally select the polymer, optimize the crosslinking parameters, predict the interaction between the drug and the polymer, assess the toxicity, model the release rate of the drug, and design the personalized therapeutic treatment. AI driven NS systems can also facilitate targeted delivery, stimuli-responsive release, and precision medicine applications. This review highlights the structure of NS, AI methods, computational tools, engineering methods, therapeutic applications, existing challenges, and future prospects for smart NS systems for precision drug delivery.

 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Trotta F, Zanetti M, Cavalli R. Cyclodextrin-based nanosponges as drug carriers. Beilstein J Org Chem.2012; 8:2091–9.

Swaminathan S, Vavia PR, Trotta F, Cavalli R. Nanosponges encapsulating camptothecin: formulation, characterization and cytotoxicity. Eur J Pharm Biopharm. 2007;68(3):579–87.

Ansari KA, Vavia PR, Trotta F, Cavalli R. Cyclodextrin-based nanosponges for delivery of resveratrol: in vitro characterization, stability, cytotoxicity and permeation study. AAPS PharmSciTech. 2011;12(1):279–86.

Cavalli R, Trotta F, Tumiatti W. Cyclodextrin-based nanosponges for drug delivery. J Incl Phenom Macrocycl Chem. 2006;56(1–2):209–13.

Krabicová I, Appleton SL, Tannous M, et al. History of cyclodextrin nanosponges. Polymers. 2020;12(5):1122.

Subramaniyan V, et al. Artificial intelligence in pharmaceutical drug delivery and formulation development. Int J Pharm.2022; 620:121715.

Paul D, Sanap G, Shenoy S, et al. Artificial intelligence in drug discovery and development. Drug Discov Today. 2021;26(1):80–93.

Mak KK, Pichika MR. Artificial intelligence in drug development: present status and future prospects. Drug Discov Today. 2019;24(3):773–80.

Vamathevan J, Clark D, Czodrowski P, et al. Applications of machine learning in drug discovery and development. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2019;18(6):463–77.

Lo Y-C, Rensi SE, Torng W, Altman RB. Machine learning in chemoinformatics and drug discovery. Drug Discov Today. 2018;23(8):1538–46.

Ekins S, Puhl AC, Zorn KM, et al. Exploiting machine learning for end-to-end drug discovery and development. Nat Mater. 2019;18(5):435–41.

Schneider G. Automating drug discovery. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2018;17(2):97–113.

Zhavoronkov A, et al. Deep learning enables rapid identification of potent DDR1 kinase inhibitors. Nat Biotechnol. 2019;37(9):1038–40.

Jumper J, Evans R, Pritzel A, et al. Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature. 2021;596(7873):583–9.

Gromiha MM, Nagarajan R, Selvaraj S. Application of computational techniques in nanomedicine and drug delivery. Curr Med Chem. 2019;26(18):3248–65.

Lionta E, Spyrou G, Vassilatis DK, Cournia Z. Structure-based virtual screening for drug discovery: principles, applications and recent advances. Curr Top Med Chem. 2014;14(16):1923–38.

Morris GM, Huey R, Lindstrom W, et al. AutoDock4 and AutoDockTools4: automated docking with selective receptor flexibility. J Comput Chem. 2009;30(16):2785–91.

Abraham MJ, Murtola T, Schulz R, et al. GROMACS: high performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism. SoftwareX. 2015;1–2:19–25.

Phillips JC, Braun R, Wang W, et al. Scalable molecular dynamics with NAMD. J Comput Chem. 2005;26(16):1781–802.

Sliwoski G, Kothiwale S, Meiler J, Lowe EW Jr. Computational methods in drug discovery. Pharmacol Rev. 2014;66(1):334–95.

Yu H, Adedoyin A. ADME-Tox in drug discovery: integration of experimental and computational technologies. Drug Discov Today. 2003;8(18):852–61.

Qiu T, et al. Explainable artificial intelligence for healthcare and medicine. Brief Bioinform. 2022;23(4): bbac120.

Topol EJ. High-performance medicine: the convergence of human and artificial intelligence. Nat Med. 2019;25(1):44–56.

Ribeiro MT, Singh S, Guestrin C. “Why should I trust you?” Explaining the predictions of any classifier. Proc ACM SIGKDD Int Conf Knowl Discov Data Min. 2016:1135–44.

ICH Harmonised Guideline. Pharmaceutical development Q8(R2). International Council for Harmonisation; 2009.

Waghmare P, Shafi S, Swami S, Gadhave A, Damane M, Syed SM. Sponging innovations: A new era of porous nanocarriers in drug delivery and biomedical applications. Curr Pharm Anal. 2026;22:181-195. doi:10.1016/j.cpan.2025.12.011.

Shafi S, Waghmare P, Swami S, Gadhave A, Damane M. Nanosponges in modern pharmaceutics: a comprehensive review on structure, functionality, and future directions. Asian J Pharm Res Dev. 2025;13(6):130-137. doi:10.22270/ajprd.v13i6.1663.

Published

2026-06-15

How to Cite

Pranita Waghmare, Sameer Shafi, Shivlila Swami, Madhuri Damane, & Ankita Gadhave. (2026). Artificial Intelligence Assisted Design and Optimization of Nanosponges for Targeted Drug Delivery. Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Development, 14(3), 291–298. https://doi.org/10.22270/ajprd.v14i3.1803