resolution enhancer in the contrast therapeutic agents in MRI imaging, tracking of stem cells and cellular molecules, magnetic separation of biological molecules, hyperthermia, and gene therapy due to their inbuilt magnetic property, extremely fine structure, and biocompatibility [41].
3.3.8 Quantum Dots
Technically “small crystal sizing 2 to 10 nm—numbers of electrons variable occupying discrete amount, well defined state possessing electronic characteristics functionally intermediating between the bulk and discrete particulate.” They consist of a central core with semiconducting molecules encapsulated by cap shell enhancing their aqueous buffer solubility. They are used in multiple purposes like gene therapy, disease diagnosis, and drug delivery. The major limitations of quantum dot are the precipitation of nanotoxicity in biomedical applications [42].
3.3.9 Nanodiamonds
They show excellent optical and mechanical characters with larger surface area and modifiable surface morphology (Figure 3.10). Their uniqueness includes their nonhazardousness that is well suited for biomedical utilization and application. These tiny gems show a broad spectrum of potential in biological applications, drug delivery systems, tissue engineering, and bioimaging. It is also capable of mimicking the proteins and acts as a filler to fabricate the nanocomposition [65].
Figure 3.10 Nanodiamond particles with surface functional groups.
The characteristic properties of the above nanotools facilitate the advantages of decreasing the drug toxicity, minimize the drug resistance, improvise the eternal route of drug bioavailability, enhance the aqueous solubility by increasing its surface area and decreasing its particle size, and ultimately reduce the dose of drug required by increasing the ability to selectively target the specific site and enhance drug formulation stability. This uniqueness paves the way to minimize variations among the patient population and increase patient compliances enrooting the ear of current medication therapy toward patient centric and customized drug delivery [43].
3.4 Applications of Nanotechnology in Personalized Medicine
The ability of research with matter on the nanometer scale increases; researchers discover progressive applications of nanotechnology among the wide range of different pharmaceutical industries. The clinical field shall be one among the streams affected mostly by the developing sciences of nanotechnology because it coincidentally has an increased background understanding about the physiology of medications at the molecular level [44].
Nanotechnology allows better insight to enhance patient centric formulation development for clinical therapy. The excellence and the potential need for personalized medicines are established effectively through the combination of nanotechnology and nanotools to provide an upgraded promising therapy administering the suitable drug, at the right dose, at the right time, to the exact patient. This benefits the drug’s accuracy, safety, efficiency, and efficacy. Researchers have utilized nanotechnology in various biological and clinical sectors (e.g., imaging therapeutic agents tagging contrast colored carriers in the treatment of cancer) [45]. To explain hybrid fields, terminologies like biomedical nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology, and nanomedicines are applicable. The size of these formulated nanoparticulates is more similar to that of the biologically driven molecules, structures, and genetic matters. Considering the following advantage of nanoparticles, they benefit in both in vitro and in vivo for biomedical research applications such as contrast agents, direct development of analytical tools, drug delivery vehicles, and diagnostic devices. The concept of nanotechnology in personalized medicine has emerged through the combination of two technologies collaborated—biotechnology and nanotechnology—widely termed as nano biotech. The elaboration of this stream of science leads to the development of nanodevices, molecular biology for diagnosis, nanoproteomics/genomics, and biomarkers [46].
The area of science that deals with the applications of processes and tools for the manufacturing of devices to forecast, study, and understand the objectives of biological system and its needs is called nanobiotechnology [47]. It is the branch that allocates nanotechnology with biological, biomedical, and clinical uses or applications. The field helps in engineering new devices in nanoscale by repeated examination and estimation of the already existing patient elements and complexities. This paves a new era for the development of unique potential area of research that facilitates personalized medicines for the betterment of a patient’s health (e.g., nanobiosensors, nanobiofluidics, nanodevices, and nanobiophotonics) [48]. The opinions of experts express that the nanobiotechnology field in the researches and industries is a blockbuster boon for the capability of advanced changes in the current scenario. The immense applications of nanobiotechnology are more promising in the polymer’s synchronization, proteins, peptides, and nucleic acids by regulating the biological systemic function with remarkable precision [49].
In personalized medicines, the use of nanomedicine application has been widely practiced and is being maintained in its controlled position. They possess benefits like being a patient-friendly approach for an individual patient, which is attained by the use of nanomedicines in relation to customizing a therapeutic agent for a particular disease. Nanomedicines are also capable of exerting their advantages over delivering genomic matter and protein to the required site of action [50]. Though there are several advantages that served till 2014, FDA approved 43 formulations that were sensationally promoted as nanotechnology emerged products, and among them, only 4 claimed to have the property of a nanomedicinal approach [51].
For nanodevices that lay the principles of nanobiotechnology-based devices for the application of diagnosis such as an X-ray device, which is a nanodiagnostic device that captures images in different angles without the influence of material motion, they are easy to maintain due to their compact small size. Similarly, nanodevices are implanted in the biological system to release therapeutic agents in an automated fashion. Utility of a nanosensor containing a nanoradio transmitter is implanted surgically to detect a particular disease like cancer at earlier stages [52].
Nanoparticle and its technology can have a broad range of uses and applications in medicines. As mentioned, refreshing techniques in biological sensing and imaging create the best suitable tiny drug delivery systems to distribute among all the tissues or specific tissue of the human body [53]. They provide accurate delivery of therapeutic agents to the system with minimized drug toxicity, cut short the cost of therapy, and ultimately increase the bioavailability at the site of action. They also enhance the intercellular bioavailability of the agents, which give a promising route of drug delivery system to the genetic material and gene-based medicines [54].
From the initial era of the drug delivery system to date, still the major challenge and limitation for the effective delivery of xenobiotics to central nervous system-related deficiencies and diseases are due to the biological membrane permeability through the blood brain barrier (BBB) [55]. They allow smaller and tiny hydrophilic compounds having a mass of 150 Da and lesser; similarly, compounds that are highly lipophilic with a mass of 500 Da are capable of diffusing through the BBB. Therefore, the general route of drug delivery system is not suitable to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, other CNS-related disorders, deficiencies in genetics, and several types of brain tumors. Nanotechnology provides suitable biodegradable, biocompatible, non-immunogenic, and non-inflammatory carriers for the therapeutic compound showing good safety, efficacy, efficiency, and site-targeted and reduced toxicity [56]. For example, in specific to the Alzheimer’s disease prevention, random studies have used traditional approaches to estimate the mono- or poly-intervention efficacy of patient treatment outcomes like cognitive functioning, biomarkers, and imaging
