Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 22, Issue 22, 2016

There is a broad range of biological, chemical and physical hurdles for drugs to reach the brain. Nanoparticulate drug delivery systems hold tremendous potential for diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders, including the capacity of crossing the blood–brain barrier and accessing to the brain after systemic administration. Thus, nanoparticles enable the delivery of a great variety of drugs including anticancer drugs, analg Read More

Background: Treatment by the pulmonary route can be used for drugs that act locally in the lungs (e.g. lung cancer) or non-invasive administration of drugs that act systemically (e.g. diabetes). The potential of using drug delivery systems (DDS) formed from non-ionic surfactants or natural products for pulmonary drug delivery are reviewed. Methods: The effectiveness of each DDS depends on it ability to not only entrap the Read More

Background: Engineered magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) possess unique properties and hold great potential in biomedicine and clinical applications. With their magnetic properties and their ability to work at cellular and molecular level, MNP have been applied both in-vitro and in-vivo in targeted drug delivery and imaging. Focusing on Iron Oxide Superparamagnetic nanoparticles (SPIONs), this paper elaborates on the recent adva Read More

The use of nanodevices to transport active compounds like small-molecular drugs, peptides, or genes found an increased attention throughout the different fields of natural sciences. Moreover, recent research trends are focused on the employment of smart nanocarriers able to react on certain internal or external applied stimuli, in order to achieve temporal and site-specific drugs/gene release. In contrast to traditional bi Read More

Cancer has become one of the main causes of death in developed countries, and it is expected to be declared as the disease with the highest worldwide morbidity and mortality indexes in the coming decades. Nanomedicine aims to overcome some problems related to this prevalent disease, particularly the lack of efficient diagnostic and therapeutic tools. The most recent scientific advances, which have conducted to Read More

Chitosan nanogels present a very interesting combination of valuable characteristics for drug delivery; those derived from their nanometric size, such as, large surface area, rapid stimuli-response, and easy functionalization; and those emerged especially from their biocompatibility, biodegradability and mucoadhesive nature. Due to this, chitosan nanogels have reached a prominent position as nanocarriers and have Read More

Background: Now a day’s natural polymer based nanoparticulate system have been widely studied as particulate vehicles in the bio-medical and pharmaceutical area. Alginate, a natural biopolymer show good biodegradability, biocompatibility and non toxic, has received attention to utilise as a carrier for preparation of polymeric nanoparticles. Chemically and physically alginate can modified easily and obtained various structu Read More

Background: Dextran (DX) is a natural polysaccharide produced in the laboratory by fermentation of sucrose under the effect of the enzyme DX sucrase (1,6-α-D-glucan-α- glucosyltransferase). After harvesting and purification DX is subjected to cracking and separation to obtain the desired molecular weight. Methods: The hydroxyl groups present in DX offer many sites for derivatization allowing the production of functionaliz Read More

During the last years we have seen an increasing number of reports describing new properties and potential applications of cationic polymers and derived nanostructures. This review gives a summary of their applications in drug delivery, the preparation methods for nano and microstructures and will attempt to give a glimpse on how their structure, chemical composition and properties may be affected or modulated as to mak Read More

Background: Nanoparticulate delivery systems receive a lot of attention in pharmaceutical research and market due to their in vivo stability, ability to protect entrapped drug, and ease of cellular penetration. The hemocompatibility and the clearance half-life are important parameters of the nanodelivery systems that will be administered through intravenous route. Natural components, like blood plasma proteins are ideal sou Read More

Nanotherapeutics has the potential of providing limitless opportunities in the area of drug and gene delivery for treatment of cancer. Although the path toward commercialization of nanoparticulate oncology drugs is long and carries significant risks, there is still considerable excitement for utilizing nanoparticle technologies in cancer drug development. Recently, there has been a significant growth in the number of nanopart Read More

Background: Native lipoproteins as nanoparticulate drug delivery systems have gained considerable attention in recent years. This is due to their biocompatibility, being endogenous, no triggering the immunological responses, relatively long half-life in the circulation, simple diffusion from vascular to extravascular compartments due to their nanometric particle size, potentially targeting capability to cellular receptors, simpl Read More