Ruggiero Carmelina, Pastorino Laura, Herrera Oscar L
Department of Communication, Computer and System Sciences, Nanobiotechnology and Medical Informatics Laboratory, University of Genova, Italy.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2010;2010:3731-2. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5627506.
NANOTECHNOLOGY is having a great impact on many industrial applications, such as manufacturing, semiconductors, nanostructured materials and biotechnology. As relates to the latter, nanobiotechnology focuses on the ability to work at the molecular and atomic level to fabricate structures combining biological materials and synthetic materials, taking into account engineering, physics, chemistry, genomics and proteomics. The main goals relate to biosensors, nanosized microchips, and more generally to medical applications at the molecular level. Nanotechnology has been recently extensively applied to treatment and diagnosis of diseases and the new term nanomedicine has been introduced, for which several definitions have so far been proposed [1]-[3] which focus on the use of engineered nano-devices and nanostructures for diagnosis and treatment. One of the key aspects of nanomedicine is targeted drug delivery by nanoscale drug carriers. At present, 95 % of all new potential therapeutics have poor pharmaco kinetics and biopharmaceutical properties, there is therefore a great need to develop drug delivery [4] systems that convey the therapeutically active molecules only to the site of action, without affecting other organs and tissues [5]. This allows to lower required doses of drugs and to increase their therapeutic indices and safety profiles. It is possible to fabricate nanoparticles or nanocapsules with different properties as relates to drug encapsulation and release. A great amount of nanoscale systems for drug delivery has been investigated; they include liposomes, dendrimers, quantum dots, nanotubes, polymeric biodegradable nanoparticles and nanocapsules [6].
纳米技术正在对许多工业应用产生重大影响，如制造业、半导体、纳米结构材料和生物技术。与后者相关的是，纳米生物技术专注于在分子和原子水平上开展工作，以制造结合生物材料和合成材料的结构，同时考虑到工程学、物理学、化学、基因组学和蛋白质组学。其主要目标涉及生物传感器、纳米尺寸的微芯片，更广泛地说还涉及分子水平的医学应用。纳米技术最近已广泛应用于疾病的治疗和诊断，并且引入了新术语“纳米医学”，到目前为止已提出了几种定义[1]-[3]，这些定义侧重于使用工程化的纳米装置和纳米结构进行诊断和治疗。纳米医学的一个关键方面是通过纳米级药物载体进行靶向药物递送。目前，所有新的潜在治疗药物中有95%的药物动力学和生物制药特性较差，因此迫切需要开发仅将治疗活性分子输送到作用部位而不影响其他器官和组织的药物递送[4]系统[5]。这能够降低所需的药物剂量，并提高其治疗指数和安全性。可以制造出与药物包封和释放相关具有不同特性的纳米颗粒或纳米胶囊。已经研究了大量用于药物递送的纳米级系统；它们包括脂质体、树枝状大分子、量子点、纳米管、可生物降解的聚合物纳米颗粒和纳米胶囊[6]。
