Biomaterials in personalized drug delivery: innovations, challenges, and future directions

The growing global demand for effective and safe therapeutics has accelerated advances in biomaterials for drug delivery applications. Biomaterials, including polymers, metals, ceramics, and composites, play a central role in modern medical devices and therapeutic systems by enabling controlled interactions with biological environments. Initially defined as inert materials interfacing with biological systems, biomaterials are now rationally engineered to treat, replace, or evaluate tissue and organ functions. Recent progress in regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, and precision healthcare has expanded their use in drug delivery, where tunable physicochemical properties-such as degradation kinetics, surface chemistry, and mechanical stability-allow controlled release, protection of labile therapeutics, and enhanced accumulation at target sites. Polymer-based biomaterials enable sustained drug release through diffusion-controlled, degradation-mediated, or stimulus-responsive mechanisms, thereby extending therapeutic exposure and reducing systemic dosing frequency compared with conventional formulations. Nanostructured carriers, including liposomes, micelles, and dendrimers, further enhance drug delivery by improving solubility, cellular uptake, and site-specific targeting via size control, surface functionalization, and ligand-mediated interactions. Despite these advances, clinical translation remains limited by challenges related to immune-biomaterial interactions, batch-to-batch variability, long-term biodegradation behavior, and the scalability of manufacturing under regulatory constraints. Future biomaterial development must therefore emphasize precision fabrication, good manufacturing practice-compatible production, and biologically informed design strategies that account for patient-specific variability. This review provides a focused overview of biomaterial-based drug delivery systems, summarizes recent technological advances, and critically discusses mechanistic and translational challenges, including immune compatibility, degradation control, and regulatory compliance, with particular emphasis on their implications for personalized drug delivery.