Nanomedicine and Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology

Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology deals with emerging new technologies for developing customized solutions for drug delivery systems. The drug delivery system positively impacts the rate of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of the drug or other related chemical substances in the body. In addition to this the drug delivery system also allows the drug to bind to its target receptor and influence that receptor’s signaling and activity. Pharmaceutical nanotechnology embraces applications of nanoscience to pharmacy as nanomaterials, and as devices like drug delivery, diagnostic, imaging and biosensor.

With the unprecedented progresses of biomedical nanotechnology during the past few decades, conventional drug delivery systems (DDSs) have been involved into smart DDSs with stimuli-responsive characteristics. Benefiting from the response to specific internal or external triggers, those well-defined nanoplatforms can increase the drug targeting efficacy, in the meantime; reduce side effects/toxicities of payloads, which are key factors for improving patient compliance. In academic field, variety of smart DDSs have been abundantly demonstrated for various intriguing systems, such as stimuli-responsive polymeric nanoparticles, liposomes, metals/metal oxides, and exosomes.

Nanopharmaceuticals offer the ability to detect diseases at much earlier stages and the diagnostic applications could build upon conventional procedures using nanoparticles. Nanopharmaceuticals represent an emerging field where the sizes of the drug particle or a therapeutic delivery system work at the nanoscale. In the pharmaceutical industry, a long standing issue is the difficulty of delivering the appropriate dose of a particular active agent to specific disease site. Nanopharmaceuticals have enormous potential in addressing this failure of traditional therapeutics which offers site-specific targeting of active agents. Such precision targeting via nanopharmaceuticals reduces toxic systemic side effects, resulting in better patient compliance. In today’s world economy, a pharmaceutical industry faces enormous pressure to deliver high-quality products to patients while maintaining profitability. Therefore pharmaceutical companies are applying nanotechnology to enhance or supplement drug target discovery and drug delivery. Nanopharmaceutical reduces the cost of drug discovery, design & development and enhances the drug delivery process. This results in the improved Research & Development success rate which enables faster introduction of new, cost-effective products to the marketplace. 

Novel Drug delivery system is the advance drug delivery system which improve drug potency, control drug release to give a sustained therapeutic effect, provide greater safety, finally it is to target a drug specifically to a desired tissue.

Graphene based materials including pristine graphene sheets, few-layer graphene flakes, and graphene oxide offer a variety of unique, versatile and tunable properties that can be creatively utilised for biomedical applications. Graphene applications in biomedicine are numerous and can be classified into several main areas: transport (delivery) systems, sensors, tissue engineering and biological agents (for example antimicrobials). Potential and promising properties of graphene and 2D materials for developing innovative and revolutionary medical devices that could improve healthcare.

Personalized medicine aims to individualize chemotherapeutic interventions on the basis of ex vivo and in vivo information on patient- and disease-specific characteristics. By noninvasively visualizing how well image-guided nanomedicines-that is, submicrometer-sized drug delivery systems containing both drugs and imaging agents within a single formulation, and designed to more specifically deliver drug molecules to pathologic sites-accumulate at the target site, patients likely to respond to nanomedicine-based therapeutic interventions may be preselected. In addition, by longitudinally monitoring how well patients respond to nanomedicine-based therapeutic interventions, drug doses and treatment protocols can be individualized and optimized during follow-up. Furthermore, noninvasive imaging information on the accumulation of nanomedicine formulations in potentially endangered healthy tissues may be used to exclude patients from further treatment. Consequently, combining noninvasive imaging with tumor-targeted drug delivery seems to hold significant potential for personalizing nanomedicine-based chemotherapeutic interventions, to achieve delivery of the right drug to the right location in the right patient at the right time.

Synthesizing nanoparticles for pharmaceutical purposes such as drug preparation can be done in two methods. Bottom up process such as pyrolysis, inert gas condensation, solvothermal reaction, sol-gel fabrication and structured media in which hydrophobic compound such as liposomes are used as bases to mount the drug. Top down process such as attrition / milling in which the drug is chiseled down to form a nanoparticle.

Drug delivery is an essential part of pharmaceutical sciences that should be taken into account early in the drug discovery and development process. A drug that cannot be delivered to its site of action is essentially useless. Drug delivery is affected by the physico-chemical properties of the drug and formulation and the interplay of these factors with the transport, binding, and metabolism of the drug in the body. New tools are needed to accurately predict delivery properties of the compounds early during drug discovery, so that the best compounds can be identified for clinical studies. Another class of tools includes the delivery methods that facilitate delivery of hard-to-deliver compounds to the appropriate target sites. Delivery of gene-based drugs (DNA, oligonucleotides, siRNA) and proteins is a major challenge in pharmaceutical science. Nanotechnology can be used to improve drug delivery in these difficult cases. The development and use of nanoparticles in the formulation of these types of drugs is a major focus at CDR, and we welcome productive industrial partnerships to develop these tools for translational use.

Nanomedicines have been in the forefront of pharmaceutical research in the last decades, creating new challenges for research community, industry, and regulators. There is a strong demand for the fast development of scientific and technological tools to address unmet medical needs, thus improving human health care and life quality. Tremendous advances in the biomaterials and nanotechnology ï¬elds have prompted their use as promising tools to overcome important drawbacks, mostly associated to the non-specific effects of conventional therapeutic approaches. However, the wide range of application of nanomedicines demands a profound knowledge and characterization of these complex products. Their properties need to be extensively understood to avoid unpredicted effects on patients, such as potential immune reactivity. Research policy and alliances have been bringing together scientists, regulators, industry, and, more frequently in recent years, patient representatives and patient advocacy institutions. In order to successfully enhance the development of new technologies, improved strategies for research-based corporate organizations, more integrated research tools dealing with appropriate translational requirements aiming at clinical development, and proactive regulatory policies are essential in the near future. 

Tissue engineering is a branch of regenerative medicine, itself a branch of biomedical engineering. Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are concerned with the replacement or regeneration of cells, tissues (the focus of tissue engineers) or organs to restore normal biological function.

Nanomedicine is simply the application of nanotechnologies in a healthcare setting and the majority of benefits that have already been seen involve the use of nanoparticles to improve the behaviour of drug substances. Today, nanomedicines are used globally to improve the treatments and lives of patients suffering from a range of disorders including ovarian and breast cancer, kidney disease, fungal infections, elevated cholesterol, menopausal symptoms, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, asthma and emphysema. The nanomedicines that are currently available are overcoming some of the difficulties experienced by normal medical approaches in delivering the benefit from the drug molecules used. In some cases the drugs have very little solubility in water and the human body struggles to absorb enough to treat the condition.  In other cases, the drug molecule is absorbed well but the body removes the drug before it has had long enough to provide a benefit.  Drugs may lead to side-effects due to poor delivery at the actual site of disease.  For example, drugs that are targeting cancers must avoid healthy tissues and organs or damage can be caused.  Nanomedicines therefore can play an important role in ensuring enough of the drug enters the body, that drug that does enter stays in the body for long periods and is targeted specifically to the areas that need treatment.

To date, various nanodrug systems have been developed for different routes of administration, which include dendrimers, nanocrystals, emulsions, liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, micelles, and polymeric nanoparticles. Nanodrug systems have been employed to improve the efficacy, safety, physicochemical properties, and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic profile of pharmaceutical substances. In particular, functionalized nanodrug systems can offer enhanced bioavailability of orally taken drugs, prolonged half-life of injected drugs (by reducing immunogenicity), and targeted delivery to specific tissues. Thus, nanodrug systems might lower the frequency of administration while providing maximized pharmacological effects and minimized systemic side effects, possibly leading to better therapeutic compliance and clinical outcomes. In spite of these attractive pharmacokinetic advantages, recent attention has been drawn to the toxic potential of nanodrugs since they often exhibit in vitro and in vivo cytotoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammation, and genotoxicity.

Nanomedicine is a branch of medicine that applies the knowledge and tools of nanotechnology to the prevention and treatment of disease. Nanomedicine involves the use of nanoscale materials, such as biocompatible nanoparticles and nanorobots, for diagnosis, delivery, sensing or actuation purposes in a living organism. Nanotechnology has many definitions but in general it is the use and application of materials with sizes in the nanometer range. Just as a millimetre is one-thousandth of a metre, a nanometer is one-millionth of a millimetre. In more understandable terms, a human hair is approximately 80,000 nanometers in diameter and the growing science and industry of nanotechnology utilises materials below 1000 nanometers. Benefits of working at this very small scale have been seen for many years over such diverse areas as electronics and energy storage to sunscreens and food packaging.

Micro and Nanosystems publishes significant original work, topical reviews and guest edited issues ranging from technologies and systems to product innovation and new manufacturing processes with features at the micro and nanoscale. Applications for micro and nanosystems in areas such as health, environment, food, security and consumer goods are covered. The topics to be addressed include Lab-on-a-chip, microfluidics, nano-biotechnology, micro and nanomanufacturing, printed electronics and MEMS. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there will be 15 million new cases of cancer worldwide in 2020. More than 90% of cancer-related deaths occur by the spread of malignant cells to vital organs, a process called metastasis. Academia, Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are making substantial research investments in order to develop specific treatments that can destroy primary and secondary tumors, i.e. those resulting from metastasis to other organs. Nanotechnology in cancer treatments is already a reality providing a wide range of new tools and possibilities, from earlier diagnostics and improved imaging to better, more efficient, and more targeted therapies.