ABSTRACT
The application of nanotechnology to medicine has already had a signifi cant impact in many areas. Within the last two decades, a number of nanoparticle (NP)-based therapeutic and diagnostic agents have been developed for the treatment of cancer, diabetes, pain, asthma, allergy, and infections. Currently, more than 20 NP-based therapeutics are in clinical use, validating the ability of NPs to improve the therapeutic index of drugs (Zhang et al. 2007). Nanotechnology is the engineering and manufacturing of materials at the atomic and molecular scale, i.e., a structure in the 1 to 100 nm size range in at least one dimension, although nanotechnology is commonly used to describe structures that are up to several micrometers in size (Farokhzad and Langer 2009). Various types of NPs have been applied to a range of medicinal purposes, including liposomes, polymeric micelles, quantum dots (QDs), gold (Au) and silicon polymer shells, dendrimers, carbon nanotubes, and fullerenes (DeLouise et al. 2012, Liu et al. 2012).
