Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, and Simpson Querrey Institute, Northwestern University, Evanston and Chicago, IL, United States.
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2022 Sep 16;12:1000972. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.1000972. eCollection 2022.
Nanotechnology is revolutionizing many sectors of science, from food preservation to healthcare to energy applications. Since 1995, when the first nanomedicines started being commercialized, drug developers have relied on nanotechnology to improve the pharmacokinetic properties of bioactive molecules. The development of advanced nanomaterials has greatly enhanced drug discovery through improved pharmacotherapeutic effects and reduction of toxicity and side effects. Therefore, highly toxic treatments such as cancer chemotherapy, have benefited from nanotechnology. Considering the toxicity of the few therapeutic options to treat neglected tropical diseases, such as leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, nanotechnology has also been explored as a potential innovation to treat these diseases. However, despite the significant research progress over the years, the benefits of nanotechnology for both diseases are still limited to preliminary animal studies, raising the question about the clinical utility of nanomedicines in this field. From this perspective, this review aims to discuss recent nanotechnological developments, the advantages of nanoformulations over current leishmanicidal and trypanocidal drugs, limitations of nano-based drugs, and research gaps that still must be filled to make these novel drug delivery systems a reality for leishmaniasis and Chagas disease treatment.
纳米技术正在彻底改变许多科学领域，从食品保鲜到医疗保健到能源应用。自 1995 年第一批纳米药物开始商业化以来，药物开发者一直依赖纳米技术来改善生物活性分子的药代动力学特性。先进纳米材料的发展通过提高药物治疗效果和降低毒性和副作用，极大地促进了药物发现。因此，像癌症化疗这样毒性很高的治疗方法也受益于纳米技术。考虑到治疗被忽视的热带病（如利什曼病和恰加斯病）的少数治疗方法的毒性，纳米技术也被探索作为治疗这些疾病的潜在创新方法。然而，尽管多年来取得了重大的研究进展，但纳米技术对这两种疾病的益处仍仅限于初步的动物研究，这引发了关于纳米药物在该领域的临床应用的问题。从这个角度来看，本综述旨在讨论最近的纳米技术发展，纳米制剂相对于现有杀利什曼原虫和杀锥虫药物的优势，纳米药物的局限性，以及仍然需要填补的研究空白，以使这些新型药物输送系统成为治疗利什曼病和恰加斯病的现实。
