Selenium as a pleiotropic agent for medical discovery and drug delivery

Abstract

Selenium as a biologically active element lends much support to health maintenance and disease prevention. It is now presenting pleiotropic effects on therapy and drug delivery. In this study, a profiling on the physiological functions, therapeutic significances, clinical/preclinical performances, and biomedical and drug delivery applications of selenium in different modalities was carried out. Major interests focused on selenium-based nanomedicines in confronting various diseases pertaining to selenium or not, especially in antitumor and antidiabetes. Furthermore, the article exclusively discusses selenium nanoparticles featured by ameliorative functions with emphasis on their applications in medical practice and drug delivery. The state-of-the-art in medical discovery as well as research and development on selenium and nano-selenium is discussed in this review.

Synergistic effect of nano-selenium and metformin on type 2 diabetic rat model: Diabetic complications alleviation through insulin sensitivity, oxidative mediators and inflammatory markers

“…Previous studies have shown that the higher selenium level is linked with a lower risk of T2DM development [16, 17, 18]. Interestingly, Se-NPs have an intrinsic hypoglycemic effect beside its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, so T1DM and T2DM can be treated with Se-NPs through alleviation of oxidative stress and sensitizing insulin [19].…”

<p>Aptamers as Versatile Ligands for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Applications</p>

“…Selenium NPs (SeNPs) have recently received attention for use in drug delivery and biomedical applications. 69 SeNPs can be functionalized with aptamers for the optimization of drug delivery. Recently, a targeted co-delivery system based on SeNPs was developed using 5TR1 aptamer as the targeting agent to enhance the in vitro and in vivo anti-tumor efficacy of epirubicin and NAS-24 aptamer (an apoptosis induction agent).…”

Amorphous Selenium Nanoparticles Improve Vascular Function in Rats With Chronic Isocarbophos Poisoning via Inhibiting the Apoptosis of Vascular Endothelial Cells

“…Although selenium protein or selenides have intrinsic biological activities ( Alim et al, 2019 ), their safe doses in vivo are small, and they are prone to toxicity, limiting the application of traditional seleno compounds ( Watanabe et al, 2020 ). At present, although selenium-based nanomedicine is widely used in biomedicine ( Guan et al, 2018 ), it has insufficient intrinsic biological activity or natural aggregation and needs multi-layer modification to reach the target ( Prateeksha et al, 2017 ). Therefore, it is vital to explore a safe and effective form of selenium with strong natural aggregation to give full play to the therapeutic effect of selenium.…”