More Effective Nanomedicines through Particle Design

Abstract

Nanomedicine is an emerging field that applies concepts in nanotechnology to the development of novel diagnostics and therapeutics. Physical and chemical properties of particles, including size, shape, modulus, surface charge and surface chemistry, play important roles in the efficacy of nanomedicines. This review focuses on the effect of particle physical and chemical properties on their interactions with cells in vitro and their pharmacokinetics and biodistribution in vivo.

Chitosan nanoparticles: a survey of preparation methods

“…All these methods comprise bottom-up fabrication processes, which involve the assembly of molecules in solution to form defined structures (Chan and Kwok 2011), in this case, nanoparticles. Delivery systems resulting from bottom-up technologies usually display size polydispersity (Wang et al 2011b), which in some cases limits nanoparticle usefulness. In fact, is it assumed that in a polydisperse system, larger nanoparticles might have higher drug loading capacity, while smaller nanoparticles are expected to have higher efficiency at delivering drugs to tissues or cells.…”

“…This means that, even if the drug carrier has high encapsulation efficiency, the efficacy of the delivery may be poor (Fan et al 2012), compromising the therapeutic efficacy. Interestingly, a recent technological development related to a top-down process termed particle replication in non-wetting templates (PRINT),which is a modified soft lithography technique, has demonstrated independent control over nanoparticle size, as well as other parameters that include shape, modulus (stiffness) and surface chemistry (Canelas et al 2009, Wang et al 2011b). Nevertheless, although this technology appears very promising in drug delivery, so far, no application was reported for chitosan, even though the authors indicate that a wide range of materials can be used, including biodegradable and biocompatible polymers (Wang et al 2011b).…”

Bridging the Knowledge of Different Worlds to Understand the Big Picture of Cancer Nanomedicines

“…Moreover, tailoring the physicochemical properties of nanoparticles, such as morphology (geometry and shape), size, surface charge, surface chemistry, composition, hydrophobicity, porosity, roughness, rigidity and colloidal stability can influence the series of biological processes that in turn determine the overall therapeutic efficacy of cancer nanomedicines ( Figure 2). [22,75,76] Thus, in order to utilize the potential of these advanced multifunctional, stimuli-responsive and theranostic nanoparticles that are showing promising therapeutic advantages at the preclinical stages in order to accelerate their clinical translation, from the nanoparticle engineering prospects focus should be at the practical challenges in the design, development of advanced targeted nanoparticle engineering, which include: (i) optimization of the preparation of complex nanoparticle designs using simple steps without the requirement of multi-step processes; (ii) full characterization of the main physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles using quantitative analytical methods and ensure the quality of the nanoparticle characterization; (iii) optimization of the loading and release of payloads and assessment of the potential cross reactions in case of combination of payloads; (iv) utilization of controllable, site specific, robust and reproducible bioconjugation chemistries for attaching targeting ligands on the surface of the nanoparticles; (v) optimization of the bio-physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles to achieve long half-life in blood circulation, favourable biodistribution and pharmacokinetics, differential accumulation in target tissue; (vi) development of scalable manufacturing processes that can adopted to large scale production.…”

Current and Future Advances in siRNA Drug Delivery Vehicles

“…For example, better strategies to mitigate off-target effects and undesirable immunological stimulation need to be addressed [21]. Furthermore, the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data have yet to be well elucidated in many of the in vivo studies performed [22].…”