Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Therapeutics
Shoshy Mizrahy
a,b
and Dan Peer
a,b
a
Laboratory of Nanomedicine, Department of Cell Research and Immunology,
George S. Wise Faculty of Life Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
b
Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
peer@post.tau.ac.il
The use of polysaccharides as building blocks in the development
of nano-size drug delivery systems is rapidly growing. This can be
attributed to the outstanding virtues of polysaccharides such as
biocompatibility, biodegradability, low toxicity, and low cost. In
addition, the variety of physicochemical properties and the ease of
chemical modifications enable the preparation of a wide array of
nanoparticles. This chapter describes the properties of common
polysaccharides and the main mechanisms for polysaccharide-based
nanoparticle preparation and provides examples from the conceptual
design toward pre-clinical and clinical applications.
5.1 Introduction
Over the past two decades, nanoparticle-based therapeutics have
been introduced for the treatment of cancer, diabetes, allergy,
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