Intracellular Delivery - Fundamentals and Applications

Abstract

This book features a special subsection of Nanomedicine, an application of nanotechnology to achieve breakthroughs in healthcare. It exploits the improved and often novel physical, chemical and biological properties of materials only exis- tent at the nanometer scale. As a consequence of small scale, nanosystems in most cases are efficiently uptaken by cells and appear to act at the intracellular level. Nanotechnology has the potential to improve diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of diseases, and includes targeted drug delivery and regenerative medicine; it creates new tools and methods that impact significantly existing conservative practices. This book more specifically targets nanotechnology in the area of drug delivery, i.e. the application of various nanoparticulates based on natural or synthetic, organic or inorgarnic materials as drug carriers, first of all to deliver drugs inside cells.