Gul Shahnaz

By Maria Hassan Kiani, Masoom Yasinzai and Gul Shahnaz

Over the past several years, employment of multifunctional polymeric excipients-based nanoparticles for controlled and targeted drug delivery of therapeutic modalities to mucosal membrane-based organelles and systemic circulation has gained enormous interest. Because they promise to resolve numerous key therapeutical issues associated with current clinical practice including low treatment efficacy and significant side effects. Potential controlled and targeted drug delivery systems, therefore, should be able to overcome not only extracellular barriers but also intracellular barriers. Extracellularly, targeted nanocarriers ought to provide extended circulation time, selective binding to the targeted mucosal tissues, long residence time at the site of absorption, and controlled drug release. Intracellularly, the targeted nanocarriers should offer cellular uptake, cellular localization, and endosomal release. Hence, this chapter will provide an overview of the unique chemistry of multifunctional polymeric enveloped diverse nanocarriers such as dendrimers, semiconducting polymer dots, quantum dots, carbon dots, and magnetic as versatile platform addressing both extracellular and intracellular barriers.

Part of the book: Molecular Insight of Drug Design

By Gul Shahnaz, Hafiz Shoaib Sarwar and Masoom Yasinzai

Despite past 60 years of extensive research in antileishmanial drug development, the successful therapy of this disease cannot be achieved at full potential. The biological barriers encountered by the therapeutic modalities favor the disseminations of the disease like intramacrophage location of parasite, lack of oral bioavailability, permeability across the cutaneous tissue, and active efflux of the drug. Nanomedicines are specifically engineered nano-sized delivery systems. The goal of designing a nanomedicine is to achieve the specific therapeutic objective via targeting the specific cells and intracellular locations, pharmacological receptors, enzymes and proteins, crossing biological barriers, and navigation through endocytic pathways. This chapter will cover various nanomedicinal approaches like targeting the macrophages, pathological organs, efflux pumps, metabolic enzymes, redox biology of Leishmania by using polymeric and metal nanocarriers to overcome all the biological barriers thus providing a successful alternative over the conventional therapies.

Part of the book: Leishmaniases as Re-emerging Diseases