Nanocarriers to targeted terapy: a goal for biomedical applications.

Abstract

The reasons for the growing interest in biomaterials for application in the biomedical field are related to need to find alternative and more effective than conventional procedures used in drug treatment of several diseases. The traditional methods of drug delivery has limitations due to the drug’s toxicity in the body. The development of nanocarriers, which can be functionalized and loaded with drugs or genetic material and can be released into the body with a controlled mechanism, was a real goal in the field of biomedical applications. Synthetic hydrogels have found many applications especially in tissue-engineering scaffolds, as carriers for implantable and drug delivery devices. Hydrogels are water swollen polymer matrices, with a tendency to imbibe water when placed in aqueous environment. This ability to swell, under biological conditions, makes it an ideal material for use in drug delivery and immobilization of proteins, peptides, and other biological compounds. Due to their high water content, these gels resemble natural living tissue more than any other type of synthetic biomaterial. Hydrogels possess several properties that make them an ideal material for drug delivery: their high degree of biocompatibility, combined with a special sensitivity to changes in physical and chemical properties as temperature, pH and ionic strength, makes them particularly suited to solving several problems in the medical field. They also have the ability to escape the host immune response when injected into the bloodstream. In this work we evaluated biocompatibility of polimeryc PVP hydrogels; this activity was carried out in collaboration with D.IN.I Palermo’s University. Our data shown that polymeric hydrogels, do not induce cell toxicity, so they can be considered suitable for the application for the designed aimed. Now we are going to load these carriers with specific drugs in order to obtain the issue in specific areas of the host organism.