nanotechnology

The development of nanoscience and its various technologies has tremendously helped to develop many dosage forms for various complicated diseases. This is a unique technology for the drug delivery containing micro porous beads loaded with drug material inside them. The nano sponge like materials are produced in order to improve the targeting characteristic along with a comfort to diminish the treats of ailments by using  mostly available drugs and their by helping to prevent most of the drug-protein degradation in the body. The development of these tiny discrete, porous and a colloidal mesh structure called as ‘nanosponges’ are preferable for topical, oral, inhalational deliveries. They are very small micronized structures of less than 1 µm. They act like a controlled and targeted material with an ease formulation and have a maximum stability. These micro molecules are synthesized from water soluble and bio erodible polymers. This tiny structure can stick, adhered or localizes to specific target receptors to produce controlled response. These materials must be focused in future and is a well promising material to be used in pharmaceutical sector. Their performance to entrap drugs or even to become complex for a desired release onto the site of action within a specific time without alteration in temperature is an advantage. In this review a brief summary of sponges with the introduction, advantages, disadvantages, preparation, loading, evaluation, and conclusion are discussed with a motto to include them in future drug developments.

For the past few decades, there has been a considerable research interest in the area of drug delivery using particulate delivery systems as carriers for small and large molecules. Particulate systems like nanoparticles have been used as a physical approach to alter and improve the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of various types of drug molecules.  Nanoparticles promise to revolutionize medicine and increasingly used in drug delivery. The purpose of this review is to explore the design, development of nanotechnology, different method of preparation and application. By making the drug into nanoparticles by using different method of preparation, which may alleviate the manifestations of disease with minimal dose and less toxicity. These drug delivery systems can be potentially translated into targeted cellular and tissue-specific clinical applications designed to achieve maximal therapeutic efficacy with minimal side effects.         

  The Pulmonary route has been conventionally used to treat diseases of the respiratory tract and also non-respiratory tract. The significant research work from the last two decades have exposed that in addition to treating local diseases, a wide range of systemic diseases can be treated by delivering drugs to the lungs. In general inhalable formulations of various drugs have been developed to treat the systemic diseases via the lungs. But the problem with those inhalable formulations is they need repeated doses of drug to control the disease condition, since the inhaled drug cleared rapidly. Therefore new technologies have been investigated, where inhaled particles are capable of controlled release of drug from the lungs. In those nanotechnology based drug delivery systems are being developed as a tremendous field. Nano refers to particles size range of 1-1000nm. An important feature of these technologies is the large geometric size of the particles than normal aerosol solutions, which makes it difficult for the lung macrophages to clear these particles. Therefore it results in longer residence times for the particles in the lungs after delivering the drug to the lungs. The present review discusses about the anatomy and structure of lungs, various conventional formulations for pulmonary delivery, and the various colloidal carriers like liposomes, dendrimers, nanoparticles, which involves the delivering of drugs to lungs.   Key words: targeted drug delivery, pulmonary drug delivery, nanotechnology, colloidal particles.