Materials Science World Congress

Precision Delivery in Nanoparticle Drug Carriers for Therapeutic Outcome Enhancement

The nanoparticle drug delivery systems have revolutionized modern medicine by providing an extremely precise targeted drug delivery system to ensure an enhancement in therapeutic outcomes while limiting the side effects of drugs. These nanocarriers can thus target diseased cells, tissues, or organs at a nanoscale, ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers, thereby facilitating effective treatments against diseases like cancer, infections, and autoimmune disorders.

Targeted drug delivery is one of the significant advantages of nanoparticle drug delivery because nanoparticles are designed to selectively target diseased cells and bind receptors with high affinity, releasing the therapeutic payload directly at the site of action, thereby sparing healthy cells and tissues more significantly, thus reducing damage to healthy cells and tissues and resulting in less side effect and better efficacy. For example, nanoparticles are able to be targeted to carry chemotherapy drugs directly to the tumor cells in cancer treatment, thus limiting the cytotoxic effects on surrounding healthy tissue.

Nanoparticles have been used in order to play an important role in gene therapy. As they can deliver nucleic acids like DNA or RNA to the targeted cells, nanoparticles can correct the genetic defects and provide potential treatments to a wide group of genetic disorders. Lipid nanoparticles have provided the major success aspect of mRNA-based vaccines such as the one developed for COVID-19 which proves that nanotechnology has immense potential in therapeutics.

Nanoparticles also possess controlled release mechanisms, which ensure that the medicine is delivered over time. This helps especially where the medicine needs to be kept at constant levels within the body so one can avoid chronic conditions, patient compliance is achievable only if the condition is well managed.

An eventual breakthrough of nanoparticle drug carriers will lead to an explosion in various fronts, including personalized medicine and regenerative medicine, with the promise of treatments tailored to better specificity and fewer adverse effects that open up the next generation of therapeutics.