Role of Nanostructured Materials in Health and Medicine

Role of Nanostructured Materials in Health and Medicine

Rafia Bashir, Hamida Tun-Nisa Chisti, Tauseef Ahmad Rangreez, Rizwana Mobin
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-5563-7.ch017
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Abstract

In the recent times, nanotechnology has been the most explored and extensively studied area. With the application of nanotechnology, many devices were devised at a lightning speed, which were earlier impossible to imagine. Nanotechnology offers multiple benefits in treating chronic human diseases by site-specific and target-oriented delivery of precise medicines. This chapter describes the importance of nanoparticle-based devices like nanotubes, quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, dendrimers, etc. and their applications for the treatment of several diseases. Applications of nanoparticles in drug delivery, tuberculosis treatment, and cancer therapy are also explained in this chapter. Nanomedicines can also be used to detect diseases at much earlier stages.
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Background

Since ancient times, plant-based natural products were widely used as medicines against various diseases by humans. On the basis of traditional knowledge and practices herbs are mainly used for the preparation of modern medicines. Nearly 25% of the major pharmaceutical compounds and their derivatives available today are derived from natural resources (Swamy, 2016). Natural products showed remarkable characteristics which include extraordinary chemical diversity, chemical and biological properties with macromolecular specificity and less toxicity. Despite several advantages, pharmaceutical companies are hesitant to invest more in natural product based drug discovery and drug delivery systems (Beutler et al, 2009) and instead explore the available chemical compounds libraries to discover novel drugs. In drug delivery process the use of large sized materials poses major challenges, including in vivo instability, poor solubility, poor bioavailability, poor absorption, problems with target-specific delivery, and probable adverse effects of drugs. Therefore, to solve these critical issues new drug delivery systems for targeting drugs to specific body parts could be used (Martinho et al, 2011 and Jahangirian et al, 2017).

Key Terms in this Chapter

Nanostructured Material: Nanoscale particles of organic and inorganic materialswhose diamensions are 1-100nm.

Nanopharmaceutical Aerosol: It can be defined as an aerosol product containing therapeutically active ingredients dissolved in a propellant solvent for oral administration into body.

Quantum Dots: Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor nanoparticles whose optical and electronic properties differ from larger particles due to quantum mechanics.

Nanomedicines: It is the branch of medicine concerned with the use of nanotechnology.

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