ABSTRACT
The need for affordable and effective treatments for different diseases and disorders has been the motivation for researchers to develop and study novel drug delivery techniques. In this regards, nanomaterials have been widely used for the development of nano-based drug delivery and cancer therapy. The nano-based drug delivery systems (NDDSs) offer several advantages over the conventional drug delivery systems, such as multiple targeting functionalization, in vivo imaging, multiple drug delivery to drug resistant cells, extended circulation half-life, and controlled drug release. The use of NDDSs for biomedical applications constitutes a new research field called “nanomedicine” which involves a multistep process from the design to synthesis and in vitro experiments. This paper reviews the basics of NDDSs and application of nanomaterials such as liposomes, dendrimers, nanoparticles and nanotubes in this field.
