ABSTRACT
Over the past three decades, nanoparticles have emerged as attractive vehicles for drug-delivery applications (Allen and Cullis 2004, Emerich and Thanos 2007, Faraji 2009, Fenske and Cullis 2008, Fenske et al. 2008, Maurer et al. 2001, Zhang 2007). There are now large bodies of literature describing nanoparticles based on lipids, inorganic materials, nanocrystals, nanotubes, dendrimers, and synthetic and natural polymers (Allen and Cullis 2004, Cadete 2012, Faraji 2009, Fenske and Cullis 2008, Liu 2008). Of these, nanoparticles based on lipids and polymers have shown the most promise, with lipid-based systems the clear leader in terms of sophistication and number of products in the clinic for systemic delivery of both small molecules and macromolecules. This review will rst focus on lipid nanoparticle (LNP) drug-delivery systems encapsulating small molecule conventional drugs and then LNP-containing genetic drugs such as plasmids, antisense oligonucleotides (ODN), and small, interfering RNA (siRNA). This is followed by a section detailing recent advances in the last 5 years, followed by a summary of medical applications.
