Drug delivery using metal oxide nanoparticles

MÓNICA C. GARCÍA; JAZMÍN TORRES; ANTONELLA V. DAN CÓRDOBA; MARCELA LONGHI; PAULA M. UBERMAN; KUNAL MONDAL; GHENADII KOROTCENKOV

Metal Oxides for Biomedical and Biosensor Applications

Elsevier

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2021; p. 35 - 83

During the last decades, the use of nanotechnology in order to reach purposes from biomedical and pharmaceutical fields has had a progressively increasing impact, even on preclinical developments, shaping the emerging scientific field of nanomedicine. Currently, many of these developments are entering to the clinical area and most of them are based on nanosystems for diagnosis and/or therapy within the body,which are commonly composed by a carrier nanoplatform and a payload for imaging, sensing, and/or therapy; and optionally they can contain targeting ligands. Even though the innocuity of nanoderivative-containing medicines raises questions among the general society, as well as in the health professionals, their intrinsic chemical, physical, and biological properties render these nanomaterials particularly interesting in the biomedical field. In this sense, several different types of nanomaterials have been studied and reported. The development of nanoparticles (NPs) as drug carriers began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, there have been numerous reports and studies conducted every year and their number has increased exponentially. NPs for pharmaceutical and medical application are around now for over 50 years. Among the different types of inorganic NPs, metal oxide NPs (MONPs) have captivated the attention of several scientists and pharmaceutical industries. They exhibited several advantages, including high stability, tunable shape, porosity, easy engineering to the desired size, easy preparation processes, no swelling variations, simple incorporation into hydrophobic/hydrophilic systems, and ability for further functionalization by different molecules due to their negative surface charge. Also, the interaction of MONPs with in vivo systems is different, depending on their properties (viz., size,shape, purity, stability, and surface properties). Therefore their morphology and interfacial properties need to be comprehensively studied. The use of MONPs for diagnostics and/or therapy, including drug delivery offers many advantages for biomedical applications. MONPs have been explored for bioimaging, drug and gene delivery, hyperthermia treatments,antioxidant therapy, photodynamic therapy (PDT), antimicrobial therapy, and so on. This chapter aims to cover the main aspects regarding MONPs, including iron oxide, cerium oxide, titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, copper oxides, silver oxide, magnesium oxide,calcium oxide, nickel oxide, and aluminum oxide. Their biomedical applications are highlighted, mainly focusing on their preclinical and clinical evaluation, and some representative examples on their use for drug delivery are described.