Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
PS Phosphatidylserine
RBC Red blood cells
rMSCs Rat mesenchymal stem cells
rBMSCs Rat bone marrow stem cells
RE Reticulo-endothelial
RGD Arginylglycylaspartic acid, a tripeptide composed of
L
-arginine,
glycine, and
L
-aspartic acid
SC Stem cells
siRNA Small interfering RNA
SLA Soluble Leishmania antigens
SPECT/CT Micro-single photon emission computed tomography/computed
tomography
TLR
Toll-like receptors
TNF
Tumor necrosis factor
TSL
Thermosensitive liposomes
VEGF
Vascular endothelial growth factor
VEGFR
Vascular endothelial growth factor receptor
9.1
Introduction
The application of nanotechnology to medicine, i.e., nanomedicine and its impact
on public health has been evidenced globally. Nanosized biological tools find
tremendous application in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases.
The dynamic several distinct application areas include drug delivery, in vitro
diagnostics, drug based therapies, in vivo imaging, and active implants. Over the
past few decades, encouraging success has been made in the field of nanomedicine,
resulting in a number of more effective and less toxic products and imaging systems
enabling therapeutic and diagnostic interventions in hard and soft tissue implants,
bone substitute materials, dental restoratives, antibiotic, antiallergic, anticancerous
therapeutic materials. The main goal of nanotherapeutics is to improve pharmaco-
kinetics, drug bioavailability, efficacy, and safety to promote the treatment of
diseases by successful application of nanotherapeutic products like liposomes,
their regulatory pathway, for timely clinical translations and the realization of
health care benefits for human and life stock [
1
-
7
].
Liposomes, composed of phospholipid bilayers encompassing an aqueous core
have been reported of their remarkable ability to affect growth and proliferation,
and carry drugs and both hydrophobic and hydrophilic compounds. This property of
liposomes finds wide-scale application in the therapeutic and clinical research and
as drug delivery devices. The name liposome is derived from two Greek words:
“Lipos” meaning fat and “Soma” meaning body. The first liposomes were described
by British hematologist Dr Alec D Bangham in 1961 which was published in 1964,
at the Babraham Institute, in Cambridge. In the last two decades considerable
research globally have led to an array of techniques for encapsulating therapeutic
