Nanostructures in Nanomedicine: Critical Issues and Perspectives

Abstract

In the last decades the development of novel smart nanomaterials provide versatile tuneable platforms for the investigation and manipulation of several biological tasks with low invasiveness in tissues and biological systems. As a matter of fact, a large variety of smart integrated nanostructured systems have proven their effectiveness for various types of biomedical applications, including stimuli-responsive organic and metal nanoparticles as well as hybrid (organic/inorganic) nanostructures. These novel nanostructures allow the possibility to include a diagnostic imaging system with the monitoring of the temporal evolution of the response of the disease in patients. The development of integrated medical nano-devices, that includes early diagnostics functions, allow to attain advanced profiling of the health (and disease) of individual patient, thus providing new methods for personalized health monitoring and preventative medicine. However, although the good performance of these novel nano-platform against a large number of specific diseases, a number of inherent drawbacks and critical issues are still present. This circumstance limit their translation in the clinic experience. Much efforts are currently being directed at bridging the gap to put these smart nano-platforms into practice, by a deeper investigation of their safety, therapeutic efficacy, and a detailed understanding of their physico-chemical behaviour.