Nano-Based Drug Delivery Systems by PK Gupta

Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24287-8_6

Abstract

Nanoparticles are important for refining drug delivery. There has been a considerable increase in the number of new biotechnology-based therapeutics. In addition to being vehicles for drug delivery, NPs can be used as pharmaceuticals as well as diagnostics. Most of these are proteins and peptides, and their delivery present special challenges. Cell and gene therapies are sophisticated methods of delivery of therapeutics. Recently, advances in targeted drug delivery have occurred in therapy and the methods in which NCs can deliver drugs include: passive targeting, active targeting, vascular targeting (endothelial cells), targeting the mildly acidic tumor microenvironment (ph specificity), temperature specificity, and nuclear targeting. However, drug delivery to the brain across the blood–brain barrier presents many challenges. Therefore, refinements in drug delivery will facilitate the development of personalized medicine. This chapter highlights an overview of the current NC drug delivery systems (DDSs) starting with their properties, various routes of drug administration, various drug formulations, as well as devices used for drug delivery and targeted drug delivery. In this perspective, chemical, physical, and biological engineering principles and strategies for constructing DNA-assisted NCs or other suitable techniques that can be precisely reconfigured by external and internal stimuli to drive the release of a loaded drug in a target region with appropriate microenvironments have been discussed. Considering the potential applications of NPs in many fields and the growing apprehensions of the FDA about the toxic potential of nano products, it is the need of the hour to look for new internationally agreed free of bias toxicological models by focusing more on in vivo studies.