Nanotechnology and Drug Delivery

ISLAN GA; MARTIN-SALDAÑA S; TUMIN CHEVALLIER M; ALVAREZ VA; CASTRO GR

ADME Processes in Pharmaceutical Sciences

Springer

Año: 2018; p. 135 - 167

Nanotechnology could be defined as the manipulation of atoms and molecules to design, develop, and apply natural and artificial structures and/or devices with special purposes or applications and superior biophysical properties. This expanding field is now providing powerful tools for the pharmaceutical industry such as polymeric, solid lipid, metallic, and magnetic nanoparticles, liposomes, dendrimers, and other nanostructures. This new area is now called nanopharmaceutics and could also allow the understanding of the mechanisms of disease on a molecular basis. Drug delivery mediated by nanosystems is particularly relevant since a small amount of the nanodevice is required to deliver molecules under physiological conditions, in the therapeutic windows, with tailored kinetic, minimizing undesirable side effects. However, some pertinent considerations must be taken into account for the design and synthesis of drug delivery nanosystems.In the present chapter, the main physicochemical properties of nanoparticles (NPs), the mechanisms of drug loading and release, the administration routes of NPs, and how targeting can improve the delivery of drugs to the specific sites, in addition to the characteristic of the most commonly used or investigated NPs for the treatment of illnesses, are extensively discussed and explained with figures and tables.