Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 14, Issue 15, 2013

Nanosize materials provide hopes, speculations and chances for an unprecedented change in drug delivery in near future. Nanotechnology is an emerging field to produce nanomaterials for drug delivery that can offer a new tool, opportunities and scope to provide more focused and fine-tuned treatment of diseases at a molecular level, enhancing the therapeutic potential of drugs so that they become less toxic and more effective. Nanodimensional drug delivery systems are of great scientific interest as they project their tremendous utility because of their capability of altering biodistribution of therapeutic agents so that they can concentrate more in the target tissues. Nanosize drug delivery systems generally focus on formulating bioactive molecules in biocompatible nanosystems such as nanocrystals, solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructure lipid carriers, lipid drug conjugates, nanoliposomes, dendrimers, nanoshells, emulsions, nanotubes, quantum dots etc. Extensively versatile molecules like synthetic chemicals to naturally occurring complex macromolecules such as nucleic acids and proteins could be dispensed in such formulations maintaining their stability and efficacy. Empty viral capsids are being tried to deliver drug as these uniformly sized bionanomaterials can be utilized to load drug to improve solubility, reduce toxicity and provide site specific targeting. Nanomedicines offer a wide scope for delivery of smart materials from tissue engineering to more recently artificial RBCs. Nanocomposites are the future hope for tailored and personalized medicines as well as for bone repairing and rectification of cartilage impairment. Nanosize drug delivery systems are addressing the challenges to overcome the delivery problems of wide ranges of drugs through their narrow submicron particle size range, easily manipulatable surface characteristics in achievement of versatile tissue targeting (includes active and passive drug targeting), controlled and sustained drug release property to achieve increased therapeutic efficacy and reduced side effects. Nanoparticles and nanoliposomes are emerging areas of nanotechnologies that have already begun to make an impact over new modalities for cancer chemotherapy, diagnosis as well as gene delivery. Presently it is possible to reduce the particle size in such a way that the particles can be easily injected or inhaled and many types of human cells are capable to internalize them. A number of fabrications such as PEGylation, specific antibody conjugation, aptamer ligation, specific ligand binding etc. on the nanosize delivery devices makes them in the streamline of research to particularly target the diseased cells thus avoiding the healthy one. Potential of nanosize carriers to cross the blood brain barrier encourages us to build up a new strategy for delivery of therapeutically active agents to the brain. Nanotechnology is showing an emerging effect in chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases etc. Nanosize vaccines are having greater effect in production of better immunity against pathogens through direct administration of medication to the specialized dendritic cells in the immune systems. Lots of hopes and speculations are reigning around the scientists with nanosize drug delivery systems that may revolutionize the drug delivery with the better understanding of drug action mechanism and identification of biomarker associated with specific diseases. Nanosize drug delivery systems are emerging with the promising strategies for efficient targeted drug delivery. The proper designing of these systems can make them capable for being independent in the normal tissue environments and selective at the diseased pharmacological site. Nanomaterials as formulations are already in the market or in clinical trials. Investigation on nanostructural drug delivery is a highly growing field today as an extensive amount of research is on with an expectation to open up new avenues to drug delivery. No doubt the next era of drug therapy will be greater influenced by nanoscale drug delivery systems. However these newer systems for delivery of bioactive molecules must be reliable, efficient and safe.

This review describes the use of Pickering emulsions for topical drug delivery. The focus is on Pickering emulsions and how to formulate these. However, a short description of the challenges of topical drug delivery is also given. The article describes how Pickering emulsions might have other properties than traditional topical creams. It is our believe that Pickering emulsions could give added value to topical formulations as it is surfactant free, has new properties, and may alter the transport of drugs across the skin barrier.

The triterpenes α- and β-amyrins display important pharmacological activities. As a result of their high hydrophobia, they present low water solubility and reflect poor oral bioavailability. Different techniques can be used for the improvement of amyrins solubility, one of them is the use of nanoemulsions. Therefore, the method of direct emulsification was used to develop a nanoemulsion of these triterpenes and the resulting drug delivery system was characterized by an in vitro release assay. Encapsulation efficiency higher than 99% was achieved with total release around 30% in 24 h, which suggests that this system could be useful for the administration of α- and β-amyrins by different routes in an efficient way.

Nanoparticles mediated vaccine delivery is an emerging technology and considered as better adjuvant for delivering vaccines when compared to conventional delivery system. The purpose of this delivery system is to provide simple stable formulation that elicits lifelong immunity preferably with single shot. In line to develop the biodegradable polymer vaccine delivery system it is necessary to understand about the nature of polymer, type of antigen to be encapsulated, broad idea about immunological sketch. In this review, we attempt to provide an overview about the nano particle vaccine delivery system and interaction between nano particle and the immune system.

Tumor targeted therapy has brought a new hope to the cancer patients. With the recent advances in nanotechnology and growing knowledge on unique cancer biomarkers, it is now possible to manipulate the surface architecture of polymeric nanoscale delivery systems with targeting moieties, such as antibodies, antibody fragments, specific molecules, small peptides, RNA aptamers etc. to target specific receptors and antigens present exclusively or overexpressed on the tumor cell surface or on the tumor endothelial cell surface. These modified polymeric nanoparticles deliver the loaded chemotherapeutics preferentially to the tumor tissue and not to the healthy tissue. This ensures highly targeted treatment without severe side effects which are normally experienced by the cancer patients in case of conventional chemotherapy. Such specifically constructed polymeric nanocarriers with improved tumor targeting profile are now regarded as engineered polymeric nanoparticles, which have become one of the prime areas of drug delivery research in recent times. This review describes specific approaches used in recent years to construct engineered polymeric nanoparticles, their emerging potential for cancer therapy and recent advances in tumor targeting. An equal attention has been devoted to the fundamental problems encountered in practical fields which limit their clinical use and industrial production.

Blood brain barrier (BBB) found to act as rate limiting factor in drug delivery to brain in combating the central nervous system (CNS) disorders. Such limiting physiological factors include the reticuloendothelial system and protein opsonization, which present across BBB, play major role in reducing the passage of drug. Several approaches employed to improve the drug delivery across the BBB. Nanoparticles (NP) are the solid colloidal particle ranges from 1 to 1000nm in size utilized as career for drug delivery. At present NPs are found to play a significant advantage over the other methods of available drug delivery systems to deliver the drug across the BBB. Nanoparticles may be because of its size and functionalization characteristics able to penetrate and facilitate the drug delivery through the barrier. There are number of mechanisms and strategies found to be involved in this process, which are based on the type of nanomaterials used and its combination with therapeutic agents, such materials include liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles and non-viral vectors of nano-sizes for CNS gene therapy, etc. Nanotechnology is expected to reduce the need for invasive procedures for delivery of therapeutics to the CNS. Some devices such as implanted catheters and reservoirs however will still be needed to overcome the problems in effective drug delivery to the CNS. Nanomaterials are found to improve the safety and efficacy level of drug delivery devices in brain targeting. Nanoegineered devices are found to be delivering the drugs at cellular levels through nono-fluidic channels. Different drug delivery systems such as liposomes, microspheres, nanoparticles, nonogels and nonobiocapsules have been used to improve the bioavailability of the drug in the brain, but microchips and biodegradable polymeric nanoparticulate careers are found to be more effective therapeutically in treating brain tumor. The physiological approaches also utilized to improve the transcytosis capacity of specific receptors expressed across the BBB. It is found that the low density lipoproteins related protein (LPR) with engineered peptide compound (EpiC) formed the platform incorporating the Angiopep peptide as a new effective therapeutics. The current challenges are to design and develop the drug delivery careers, which must be able to deliver the drug across the BBB at a safe and effective manner. Nanoparticles are found to be effective careers in delivery of conventional drugs, recombinant proteins, vaccines as well as nucleotides. Nanoparticlulate drug delivery systems are found to be improving in the pharmacokinetic strategies of the drug molecules such as biodistribution, bioavailability and drug release characteristics in a controlled and effective manner with site specific drug delivery targeting to tissue or cell with reduction in toxic manifestation. Therefore, the use of nanotechnology in the field of pharmaceutical biotechnology helps in improving the drug delivery strategy including the kinetics and therapeutic index to solve the delivery problems of some biotech drugs including the recombinant proteins and oligonucleotides. This review is made to provide an insight to the role of nanobiotechnology in drug delivery and drug targeting to brain and its recent advances in the field of drug delivery systems.

The increasing resistance of microorganisms against antibiotics available on the pharmaceutical market is now a global problem. There is an incessant necessity to search for new, effective treatments against resistant strains of microorganisms, for new potent classes of antibiotics with novel modes of action targeted at important components of microbial cells. Such a critical, essential system for cell functioning is a RNA polymerase (RNAP), an enzyme that catalyses one of the stages of gene expression: transcription. RNAP is a proven target for a number of antibiotics, and it still remains an attractive drug target for new potent antimicrobial compounds. In this review several examples of inhibitors for transcription and RNAP are presented.

FGF-21 is a potential candidate for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, the clinical application of wild-type human FGF-21 is challenging due to some limitations, such as its poor hypoglycemic potency and short in vivo half-life. In this paper, we have produced an FGF-21 mutant (ahmFGF-21) by exchanging the functional domain of hFGF-21 with that of mFGF-21 to improve the potency of FGF-21. Results showed that the ahmFGF-21 protein was more potent than wild-type hFGF-21 in stimulating glucose uptake in vitro and lowering blood glucose levels of diabetic animals. To decrease its immunogenicity and increase its biostability, the N-terminus of ahmFGF-21 was modified in a sitespecific manner with 20kDa mPEG-propionaldehyde (mPEG-ALD). We found that the preservation time of ahmFGF-21 in vitro was significantly prolonged after PEGylation. The serum antibody levels against ahmFGF-21 in immunized rabbits with the PEGylated ahmFGF-21 were significantly reduced than those with the unmodified ahmFGF-21, and the target protein concentration in the rabbits administrated with the PEGylated ahmFGF-21 increased 9.5-fold higher than that of the unmodified ahmFGF-21. The animal experimental results showed that PEGylation of ahmFGF-21 enhanced the hypoglycemic effect in diabetic mice. These results suggest that the in vitro and in vivo hypoglycemic effects of FGF-21 are significantly enhanced by genetic modification and the metabolic pharmacology of FGF-21 in type 2 diabetic mice is improved by PEGylation at a specific site.