The current rapid advancement of numerous nanotechnology tools is being employed in treatment of many terminal diseases such as cancer. Nanocapsules (NCs) containing an anti-cancer drug offer a very promising alternative to conventional treatments, mostly due to their targeted delivery and precise action, and thereby they can be used in distinct applications: as biosensors or in medical imaging, allowing for cancer detection as well as agents/carriers in targeted drug delivery. The possibility of using different systems—inorganic nanoparticles, dendrimers, proteins, polymeric micelles, liposomes, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), quantum dots (QDs), biopolymeric nanoparticles and their combinations—offers multiple benefits to early cancer detection as well as controlled drug delivery to specific locations. This review focused on the key and recent progress in the encapsulation of anticancer drugs that include methods of preparation, drug loading and drug release mechanism on the presented nanosystems. Furthermore, the future directions in applications of various nanoparticles are highlighted.

At present, Polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most used biodegradable polyesters. The good properties and its biodegradability make that PLA can replace the fossil fuel derived polymers in different applications. PLA can be synthesized by using different methodologies. Among them, the most widely used forms on an industrial scale are the direct polycondensation of Lactic acid and the ring-opening polymerization of cyclic Lactide. The final properties of the obtained PLA are dependent on the used stereoisomers of the raw materials (Lactic acid and/or Lactide) and the conditions employed to polymerize them. Therefore, the comprehension of the synthetic mechanism of PLA is crucial to control the stereoregularity of PLA, which in turn results in an improvement of the polymer properties. So, distinct mechanisms for the synthesis of PLA by ring-opening polymerization using different catalysts systems (organometallic catalysts, cationic catalyst, organic catalyst, bifunctional catalysts) are examined in this review.

Enzymes play a vital role in various industrial sectors and are essential components of many products. Hybrid enzyme-polymeric capsules were developed using polysulfone-activated carbon capsules as scaffolds. The polysulfone-activated carbon capsules with an average diameter of 2.55 mm were fabricated by applying a phase inversion precipitation method. An increase in the amount of immobilized enzymes was observed with growth of activated carbon amount in polysulfone matrix. Enzyme immobilization was confirmed by the Bradford method, while Viscozyme^® L activity in carboxymethyl cellulose hydrolysis to glucose was measured by the Reducing Sugar DNS method. The recycling of the hybrid Viscozyme^® L-polysulfone/activated carbon capsules, and their reuse for subsequent cellulose hydrolysis was investigated and demonstrated repeatability of results.

List of contributors was published in Polymer Engineering on page IX.