Journal of
eISSN: 2377-4282
Submit manuscript...
Mini Review Volume 3 Issue 4
Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery
Syed K Hasan,1
Verify Captcha
Regret for the inconvenience: we are taking measures to prevent fraudulent form submissions by extractors and page crawlers. Please type the correct Captcha word to see email ID.
Bhavna Gupta,1 Ted Germond,1 Arthur Watterson1
Verify Captcha
Regret for the inconvenience: we are taking measures to prevent fraudulent form submissions by extractors and page crawlers. Please type the correct Captcha word to see email ID.
1Department of Research and Development, Immunotrex Biologics Inc, USA
2University of Massachusetts, USA
Correspondence: Syed K Hasan, Department of Research and Development, Immunotrex Biologics Inc, 100 Business Park Dive, Suite #4, Tyngsborough MA 01879, USA
Received: January 28, 2016 | Published: April 23, 2016
Citation: Hasan SK, Gupta B, Germond T, Watterson A (2016) Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery. J Nanomed Res 3(4): 00064. DOI: 10.15406/jnmr.2016.03.00064
Introduction
Nanotechnology as a discipline has opened a new approach within the fieldof drug delivery. There remain hurdles to overcome to create cost effective, non-toxic and highly stable viable drug carriers with the capacity to target specific tissues. In this mini review we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the current art in the field of “nano” drug delivery systems. The three major systems as shown in the illustration beloware the most favored in industrial development but each one has characteristic weaknesses that outweigh its strengths as an effective carrier (Figure 1) (Table 1). As shown in the chart above - Liposomes are biocompatible and very cost effective to produce but they are often too large, often unstable and offer poor encapsulation of the desired therapeutic .1-4 Dendrimers are a unique system but are difficult to synthesize and pose a potential immune system reactivity concern (e.g. hapten reaction) due to its conformational structure .5-6 Quantum dots (e.g. cross-linked iron oxide) are not suitable for drug carriers due to their metallic nature but have been hotly pursued as potential imaging reagents. Research to date on QDots show them to be toxic to body tissues.7-8 Thus far it seems there is no good nano-carrier for therapeutic delivery but one that has been introduced a few years back does seem to have great potential. PEG-based nanoparticle formulations have been used in the past but until recently none were stable enough for therapeutic delivery.
Figure 1 Liposomes, Dendimers, Cross-Linked iron oxide.
Delivery System |
Strengths |
Drawbacks |
Liposomes |
Biocompatible |
Often too large |
Clinical success in cancer (breast, ovarian, lymphoma), antifungals |
stability & sterility isues |
|
Poor encapsulation |
||
Dendimer |
High surface unites per area |
Difficult synthesis-time consuming, expensive |
Adaptable interior |
Scalability issues |
|
Imaging Agent (Megnetic, Qdots) |
Easily modifiable |
Less suitable for drug delivery applications |
Powerful MR, fluorescence contrast agents |
Potential toxicity (Qdots) |
Table 1 Comparison of different delivery systems
We have a process to make water soluble nanospheres (80-100nm) with the capacity to encapsulate both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs, along with the ability to selectively target cells in tissue via ligands attached to the outer surface. Currently, research is focused on drug delivery to selective targets via ligand attachments. This should pave the way for more complex nanoparticle delivery systems.9,10 (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Amphiphilic PEG Copolymer w/ Functional Groups.
Acknowledgments
None.
Conflicts of interest
None.
References
- Paliwal SR, Paliwal R, Agrawal GP et al. Hyaluronic acid modified pH‒sensitive liposomes for targeted intracellular delivery of doxorubicin. J Liposome Res. 2016;19:1‒12.
- López‒Dávila V, Magdeldin T, Welch H et al. Efficacy of DOPE/DC‒cholesterol liposomes and GCPQ micelles as AZD6244 nanocarriers in a 3D colorectal cancer in vitro model. Nanomedicine. 2016;11(4):331‒344.
- Mikhaylov G, Mikac U, Magaeva AA et al. Ferri‒liposomes as an MRI‒visible drug‒delivery system for targeting tumours and their microenvironment. Nat Nanotechnol. 2011;6(9):594‒602.
- Lokerse WJ, Kneepkens EC, Ten Hagen TL et al. In depth study on thermosensitive liposomes: Optimizing formulations for tumor specific therapy and in vitro to in vivo relations. Biomaterials. 2015;82:138‒150.
- Singh J, Jain K, Mehra NK, Jain NK Dendrimers in anticancer drug delivery: mechanism of interaction of drug and dendrimers. Artif Cells Nanomed Biotechnol. 2016;8:1‒9.
- Wais U, Jackson AW, He T et al. Nanoformulation and encapsulation approaches for poorly water‒soluble drug nanoparticles. Nanoscale. 2016;8:1746‒1769.
- Maity AR, Stepensky D Efficient Subcellular Targeting to the Cell Nucleus of Quantum Dots Densely Decorated with a Nuclear Localization Sequence Peptide. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2016;8(3):2001‒2009.
- TS Hauck, RE Anderson, HC Fischer et al. In vivo quantum‐dot toxicity assessment. Small. 2010;6(1):138‒144.
- Kumar R, Chen MH, Parmar VS et al. Supramolecular Assemblies Based on Copolymers of PEG600 and Functionalized Aromatic Diesters for Drug Delivery Applications. J Am Chem Soc. 2004;126(34):10640‒10644.
- Kumar V, Gupta B, Kumar G et al. Novel PEGylated Amphiphilic Copolymers as Nanocarriers for Drug Delivery: Synthesis, Characterization and Curcumin Encapsulation. Journal of Macromolecular Science, Part A: Pure and Applied Chemistry. 2010;47(12):1154‒1160.
©2016 , et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.