In traditional drug delivery systems such as oral ingestion or intravascular injection, the medication is distributed throughout the body through the systemic blood circulation. For most therapeutic agents, only a small portion of the medication reaches the organ to be affected, such as in chemotherapy where roughly 99% of the drugs administered do not reach the tumor site. Targeted drug delivery seeks to concentrate the medication in the tissues of interest while reducing the relative concentration of the medication in the remaining tissues. For example, by avoiding the host's defense mechanisms and inhibiting non-specific distribution in the liver and spleen, a system can reach the intended site of action in higher concentrations. Targeted delivery is believed to improve efficacy while reducing side-effects.
When implementing a targeted release system, the following design criteria for the system must be taken into account: the drug properties, side-effects of the drugs, the route taken for the delivery of the drug, the targeted site, and the disease.
Increasing developments to novel treatments requires a controlled microenvironment that is accomplished only through the implementation of therapeutic agents whose side-effects can be avoided with targeted drug delivery.  Advances in the field of targeted drug delivery to cardiac tissue will be an integral component to regenerate cardiac tissue.
There are two kinds of targeted drug delivery: active targeted drug delivery, such as some antibody medications, and passive targeted drug delivery, such as the enhanced permeability and retention effect (EPR-effect).