Engineering precision nanoparticles for drug delivery
In recent years, the development of nanoparticles has expanded into a broad range of clinical applications. Nanoparticles have been developed to overcome the limitations of free therapeutics and navigate biological barriers — systemic, microenvironmental and cellular — that are heterogeneous across patient populations and diseases. Overcoming this patient heterogeneity has also been accomplished through precision therapeutics, in which personalized interventions have enhanced therapeutic efficacy. However, nanoparticle development continues to focus on optimizing delivery platforms with a one-size-fits-all solution. As lipid-based, polymeric and inorganic nanoparticles are engineered in increasingly specified ways, they can begin to be optimized for drug delivery in a more personalized manner, entering the era of precision medicine. In this Review, we discuss advanced nanoparticle designs utilized in both non-personalized and precision applications that could be applied to improve precision therapies. We focus on advances in nanoparticle design that overcome heterogeneous barriers to delivery, arguing that intelligent nanoparticle design can improve efficacy in general delivery applications while enabling tailored designs for precision applications, thereby ultimately improving patient outcome overall.
Introduction
Engineered nanomaterials hold significant promise to improve disease diagnosis and treatment specificity. Nanotechnology could help overcome the limitations of conventional delivery — from large-scale issues such as biodistribution to smaller-scale barriers such as intracellular trafficking — through cell-specific targeting, molecular transport to specific organelles and other approaches. To facilitate the realization and clinical translation of these promising nano-enabled technologies, the US National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000 and outlined well-defined initiatives and grand challenges for the field. These initiatives have supported the recent efforts to investigate and improve nanotechnology, of which nanoparticles (NPs) constitute a significant portion of reported research and advancement.
Access the full review here: Mitchell, M.J., Billingsley, M.M., Haley, R.M. et al. Engineering precision nanoparticles for drug delivery. Nat Rev Drug Discov (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41573-020-0090-8