Designing drug delivery systems: the impact of structural order and disorder for optimized therapeutic outcomes

The implementation of drug delivery systems in nanomedicine aims to improve the efficacy, safety and stability of therapeutic substances within the body, while controlling their rate and time of release. While numerous reviews over the years have thoroughly summarized the most recent advances and applications of drug delivery systems, to the best of our knowledge none has ever approached the topic by focusing on the impact of their structural order on both drug loading and the resulting therapeutic outcome. In this review, we aim to highlight the importance of considering the intrinsic properties of the carriers in terms of atomic, molecular and supramolecular order. Indeed, each level of order enables specific interactions between the carrier and cargo, leading to unique properties of the resulting nanosystems. Depending on the final application, the choice of a specific drug delivery system can therefore significantly influence the therapeutic effects. Thus, our work aims to facilitate the design of drug delivery systems by elucidating which level of intrinsic material order is most appropriate for a given clinical challenge. The literature search included PubMed and Scopus covering the period from January 2000 to July 2025.