Physicochemical Properties that Determine Cellular Transport of Nanocarriers In Vitro and In Vivo

In recent years, nanoparticles have held great promise for successful drug targeting and controlled drug release. Many nanoparticle applications have been used to maximize the enhanced effective accumulation and intracellular entry. Because of the physicochemical properties of particles determine their therapeutic efficiency, it is vital to understand the effects of key drug carrier properties such as size, shape and surface chemistry on their internalization performance at the cellular level. Furthermore, these drug carrier properties will also influence their fate in biological systems in vivo. In this review, we introduce distinct internalization routes including phagocytosis and pinocytosis, and discuss the effect of particle size, shape, material composition and charge on the utilization of a selected pathway. We then briefly describe how these parameters affect nanoparticle behavior in vivo. We also focus on the effects of the cell type and the extracellular environment on the internalization processing of nanoparticles. Furthermore, we introduce some strategies and prevalent ligands which are functionalized onto nanoparticles that have been investigated for their ability to efficiently concentrate in desired cell populations and even sub-cellular compartments.