With the advancement of polymer engineering, complex star‐shaped polymer architectures can be synthesized with ease, bringing about a host of unique properties and applications. The polymer arms can be functionalized with different chemical groups to fine‐tune the response behavior or be endowed with targeting ligands or stimuli responsive moieties to control its physicochemical behavior and self‐organization in solution. Rheological properties of these solutions can be modulated, which also facilitates the control of the diffusion of the drug from these star‐based nanocarriers. However, these star‐shaped polymers designed for drug delivery are still in a very early stage of development. Due to the sheer diversity of macromolecules that can take on the star architectures and the various combinations of functional groups that can be cross‐linked together, there remain many structure–property relationships which have yet to be fully established. This review aims to provide an introductory perspective on the basic synthetic methods of star‐shaped polymers, the properties which can be controlled by the unique architecture, and also recent advances in drug delivery applications related to these star candidates.

中文翻译：

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适用于药物输送应用的纳米星状聚合物

随着聚合物工程技术的发展，可以轻松地合成复杂的星形聚合物体系结构，从而带来许多独特的性能和应用。可以使用不同的化学基团对聚合物臂进行功能化，以微调响应行为，或者赋予其靶向配体或刺激响应部分，以控制其在溶液中的理化行为和自组织。可以调节这些溶液的流变性，这也有助于控制药物从这些基于星形纳米载体的扩散。但是，这些用于药物输送的星形聚合物仍处于发展的早期阶段。由于具有星形结构的大分子种类繁多，并且可以交联在一起的官能团的各种组合，因此仍然存在许多尚未完全确立的结构-性质关系。本文旨在就星形聚合物的基本合成方法，可通过独特结构控制的特性以及与这些候选星形化合物有关的药物输送应用的最新进展提供一个介绍性的见解。