A Concise Review of Nanomaterials for Drug Delivery and Release

This review provides an updated vision about the recent developments in the field of drug vectorization using functional nanoparticles and other nanovectors. From a large number of these nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems that emerge nearly every week, only a tiny fraction reaches a pre-clinical or clinical phase study. In this report, we intend to provide contextual information about those nanocarriers and release methods that have shown the best outcomes at in vitro and in vivo experiments, highlighting those with proven therapeutic efficiency in humans. From silica-based porous nanoparticles to liposomes or polymeric nanoparticles, each one of these nanosystems has its advantages and drawbacks. We describe and discuss briefly those approaches that, in our criterion, have provided significant advancements over existing therapies at the in vivo level. This work also provides a general view of those commercially available nanovectors and their specific area of therapeutic action.