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 andstability 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 andapplications of drug delivery systems, to the best of our knowledge none has ever approached thetopic by focusing on the impact of their structural order on both drug loading and the resultingtherapeutic outcome. In this review, we aim to highlight the importance of considering the intrinsicproperties of the carriers in terms of atomic, molecular and supramolecular order. Indeed, each level oforder enables specific interactions between the carrier and cargo, leading to unique properties of theresulting nanosystems. Depending on the final application, the choice of a specific drug delivery systemcan therefore significantly influence the therapeutic effects. Thus, our work aims to facilitate the designof drug delivery systems by elucidating which level of intrinsic material order is most appropriate fora given clinical challenge. The literature search included PubMed and Scopus covering the period fromJanuary 2000 to July 2025