ABSTRACT
These days there are many controversial discussions about nanoparticles. The term nanoparticles stands for numerous objects in the nanoscale range including particle manufactured for medical use, particle generated at the industrial scale for surface coatings, electronics, energy, or consumer products, and last but not least pollution particles. Searching for “nanoparticles” via Scopus, the big citation and abstract database, presents approximately 180,000 publications of the last few decades. Only 45,000 of these publications are in medical, pharmaceutical, or biological journals. The unspecic vocabulary is not helpful in this discussion as it implies that size would be the main crucial property. The particle size is decisive for the interaction potential with biological surroundings, by determining the accessibility and the interaction surface. Other physicochemical properties of nanoparticles, however, contribute in terms of their hazard potential. Hence, being more precise in denition makes it easier to reach a realistic appreciation of both, the promises and fears connected to nanotechnology. Studies on the impact of combustion particles on environment or human health are important for risk assessment. Some of them are worst case scenarios of intoxication with nanoparticles not intended for human use. These results should not be extrapolated to particles for deliberate use in humans as is for nanomedicine. Applying nanotechnology for medical purposes means raw materials, manufacturing processes, and quality control are chosen and designed to achieve safest possible products. Nanomedicine, which is dened by the European Technology Platform on NanoMedicine as the application of nanotechnology in health care, exploits the improved and often novel physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials at the nanometric scale (NanoMedicine 2005). As nanomedicine also includes devices for medical use we term the nanoformulated drug delivery systems as “nanopharmaceuticals,” which offer many advantages such as enhanced solubility, higher bioavailability, reduction of side effects, targeting specic tissues, or protection of unstable drugs. When this chapter is reporting about nanopharmaceuticals, it aims to deliver some examples of how the potential of nanotechnology can be harnessed for pharmaceutical applications. A brief description and appraisal of the current usability of nanopharmaceuticals is presented in section 6.1. Few considerations regarding the chances and risks depending on the application route are given in section 6.2. Translation into safe medicine needs careful evaluation of particle characteristics (section 6.3.1) and their biological effects (section 6.3.2), which can bring us closer to the goal of safety prediction based on physicochemical particle properties as it would be needed for quality/safety by design approaches (section 6.4). Finally, section 6.5 reviews selected nanopharmaceuticals on the market to learn from some best case examples.
