Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery Systems: Prospects and Challenges

Numerous breakthroughs in medicine and life sciences uncovered new branches for medical system, one that benefits is advanced drug delivery systems. Traditional drug delivery systems like IV infusions, epidermal injections, pills and ointments are lacking in terms of precision of dose administering, can’t be delivered in specific organ or even group of cells. Because of these limitation medicines and therapies had to take compromises and their effectiveness are often severely reduced and can even induce some negative side effects. Nanotechnology is stepping up to the challenge in mitigation of the shortcomings of traditional drug delivery systems at the same time improving therapeutic effects.

Advantages of Nanoparticles in Modern Medicine

Nanoparticles offer distinguishing advantage over traditional systems by utilizing physical properties observed in quantum particles in tandem with chemical properties of the active therapeutic agents. The new technology allows to overcome many barriers such as solubility, bioavailability or rapid metabolism.

Application of Quantum Dots and Polymeric Nanoparticles

Quantum dots used in modern medicine can be used to enhance marking. Their specific properties of energy absorption and light emission are crucial to enhance imaging of low abundance antigens offering exceptional staining and remarkable effective observation when compared to typical conjugated dye. With very narrow and symmetrical spectrum of emission they are perfect for multicolor imaging. Polymeric nanoparticles are offering unpropelled control over their characteristics in terms of chemistry and physics, especially surface functionality seems to be in the spot of interest for researchers. Polymeric nanoparticles, above all, offer great authority when navigating intercellular boundaries and membranes and can be designed to travel without impedance to a specific area inside the patient, delivering a drug in response to either internal or external trigger.

Nanotechnology’s Role in Brain Disease Treatment

Due to society ageing and thus consisting increasingly from elder population, brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and others are becoming more prevalent. This poses a significant challenge in treatment as the development and trials are including research on a most complex organ of our organism. One of biggest obstacle is the delivery of active ingredient to the cranial mass traditionally medicine offered invasive and non-invasive application routes. The first one is a mean of injection directly into the intercranial fluid, but still due to extremely local nature of dispensing by injection – a very non uniform gradient of diffusion throughout the brain, but offering best dosage without stressing other organs. Non-invasive are based usually on nasal administration, which is quite effective due to anatomy of brain and olfactory bulb, but still limited due to mucus barrier that has to be cleared. Nanotechnology gives a non-invasive drug delivery system. Above all nanomaterials offer great properties especially needed like prolonged circulation in blood, biocompatibility and non-toxicity but their size enable creation of nano-vehicles that can be used as carriers like liposomes, carbon nanotubes for therapeutic agents.

The Future of Implantable Drug Delivery Systems

An opening for large scale application of aforementioned technologies is rise of the implantable drug delivery system. Precise dosage by external applicator requires accurate measurement and timeliness of the dosage. Standard prescription with advanced drugs does not make the cut, and would simply not be justified economically. Fortunately in this day and age creating a dedicated and personalized wearable device is not an unrealistic option. Printed biocompatible chips are developed with the help of technology by many institutes around the world, notably work of prof. Fabrizio Torricelli with technology of XTPL for printing in life sciences. You can read more here: https://xtpl.com/the-fusion-of-precision-delivery-and-personalized-medicine/

Regulatory Considerations and Future Prospects for Nanotechnology in Medicine

There is no doubt that nanotechnology has a bright future in widely understood applied medicine and in advanced drug delivery systems. With its many promises of benefits lies, as always some caveats. Right now the technology is in its infancy, so naturally the regulation and safety standards need to catch up with current state of art without too much hinderance for scalability. However seemingly safe the nanoparticles need to be validated and verified for long term toxicological effects for both the human body and the environment. Drug delivery systems and personalized therapy is a new technology and for sure will fuel the development in many fields outside of medicine and similar industries, and with continue of widespread of printed electronics for sure will improve the therapies in majority of diseases. Careful consideration needs to be taken in order to develop a tool that with scalability will be able to serve for general public, without prohibitive costs not obtainable for those in need and without means.