Nanodevices for facing new challenges of medical treatments: stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems

BENEDINI LUCIANO; MESSINA PAULA

Systematic Reviews in Pharmacy

Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications

Año: 2021 vol. 12 p. 43 - 64

0975-8453

Theadministration of therapeutic agents for the treatment of diseases withoutinclusion in a pharmaceutical formulation has been rarely reported in thecurrent literature. In this condition, drugs show poor biodistributionprofiles, a lack of predictable therapeutic response, and possible toxicity.For overcoming this issue, delivery systems were developed to carry, releasedrugs that finally interact with target sites with accuracy. The advent ofnanotechnology has encouraged the improvement of these devices for facing newchallenges of medical treatments. Therefore, pharmaceutical formulations haveevolved from dissolutions and powders towards nanosized-smart drug deliverysystems. Consequently, in this review, they are shown the main applications ofnanotechnology on the design and development of drug delivery devices such asniosomes, liposomes, lipid-based nanoparticles, polymeric micelles,polymer-based devices, liquid crystals-based systems, and nanocomposites; andtheir capability for responding to different external and/or internal stimuliand thus release their content in the specific site. Owing to the progress indrug (or another therapeutic agent) delivery systems and those applied to theimaging diagnostics, a new subarea known as theranostic, have been launched.This strategy combines the diagnosis of diseases and their treatment in aone-step procedure through the application of external stimuli to a formulationthat once administrated to the body can release their content for treating andalso for following the progress of the disease. For that reason, theranostictherapy has also described in this text as another example of the evolution offormulations based on nanodevices.