Structural and Functional Aspects of the Interactions Between Medical Polymers and Liposomes and Bacterial Cells

Polymers are widely applied as drug delivery systems and implant coatings. This review studies the mechanisms of the interactions of biomedical polymers with model cell membranes (liposomes) and real biological objects—bacterial cell surfaces. A comparative analysis of the composition, structure, and surface charge of different types of biological membranes is outlined. We consider the main methods and approaches for studying the effect of polymers on the structure and physical and chemical properties of membranes to uncover adsorption, defects in the bilayer, violations of the integrity of the bilayer, changes in cell morphology, etc. The correlation between the observed effects on the model and real objects is analyzed. One of the important tasks of the review is to discover the key polymer’s characteristic (structure, size, charge, etc.) for designing new high-molecular compounds with the specified biological properties.