ABSTRACT
In the last 10 years, nanoscience, nanotechnology, and nanomedicine took the spotlight including the very latest focus on RNA delivery and micro RNA detection, presently highly investigated areas in biology and medicine (Bagri et al. 2010, Service 2010, Wanunu et al. 2010). The numbers of publications dealing with various aspects of nano have increased by 16-fold in the 2000s compared to the 1990s. A simple search with a topic term “nano” retrieves 2929 results from the ISI Web of Knowledge [v.4.6] database for the period of 1990-1999, and 47,205 publications for the 2000-2010 period (search performed December 2010). Similarly, the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, with 1.6 billion dollars in funding for 2010, was an agency in its infancy in the late 1990s. Already, in 2005, FDA approved albumin-bound form of paclitaxel (mean particle size of ∼130 nm) against breast cancer (FDA 2005). This formulation improved tumor response rate (33% vs. 19%), increased the time to progression from 16.9 to 23.0 weeks (HR = 0.75), and eliminated the use of chemical
13.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 337 13.2 Drug Development and Treatment Issues in Oncology ........................................................ 339
13.2.1 Development of Novel Drug Formulations ...............................................................340 13.2.2 Block Copolymer Micelles as Drug Delivery Systems ............................................ 341 13.2.3 Clinical Trials to Date Involving Block Copolymer Micelle-Based Therapeutics ... 341
13.3 In Vivo Imaging of Block Copolymer Micelle Systems ....................................................... 343 13.3.1 Block Copolymer Micelle Systems That Support MR and CT Imaging ..................344 13.3.2 Block Copolymer Micelle Systems That Support Radionuclide Imaging ................ 347 13.3.3 Block Copolymer Micelle Systems That Support Optical Imaging ......................... 347
13.4 Nanoneuroscience ................................................................................................................. 351 13.4.1 QDs (and Polymers Used for Their Coating) ............................................................ 351 13.4.2 QDs as Biomedical Tags (In Vitro and In Vivo Preclinical Studies) ....................... 352 13.4.3 QDs for Imaging and Biodistribution in Whole Animals ........................................ 353 13.4.4 QD Interactions with Cells and Possible Untoward Effects ..................................... 357 13.4.5 Drug Delivery to the Impaired CNS ........................................................................ 358 13.4.6 Current Status and Future Prospective for QD Applications in Biomedicine ..........360
