Nanomaterials: Applications in drug delivery

Abstract

Soon after the discovery of liposomes by Bangham in 1966 (Bangham et al. 1969), nanomaterials were introduced in medicine and the development of the first polymer nanoparticles for oral administration was achieved by Speiser in the late 1960s (Khanna and Speiser 1969). In the early 1970s, these objects were considered as the possible magic bullet that was a concept proposed 60 years before by the Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine Paul Ehrlich. The aim of the magic bullet is to improve treatments by targeting drugs to diseased tissues cells and subcellular compartments (Kreuter 2007). The introduction of nanomaterials in drug formulation strategies became sources of major innovations in drug delivery over the last 40 years (Couvreur and Vauthier 2006; Kreuter 2007; Bosch and Rosich 2008).