Ruthenium (Ru) with atomic number of 44 is one of the platinum group metals, the others being Rh, Pd, Os, Ir and Pt. In earth’s crust, it is quite rare, found in parts per billion quantities, in ores containing some of the other platinum group metals. Ruthenium is silvery whitish, lustrous hard metal with a shiny surface. It has seven stable isotopes. Recently, coordination and organometallic chemistry of Ru has shown remarkable growth. In this chapter, we review the application of Ru in diverse fields along with its physical and chemical properties. In the applications part of Ru we have primarily focused on the biomedical applications. The biomedical applications are broadly divided into diagnostic and treatment aspects. Ru and their complexes are mainly used in determination of ferritin, calcitonin and cyclosporine and folate level in human body for diagnosis of diseases. Treatment aspects focuses on immunosuppressant, antimicrobial and anticancer activity.
Part of the book: Noble and Precious Metals
In the past few decades, an emerging drug delivery system that came into light is transdermal drug delivery system. It has become the talk of the town in the field of drug delivery because of its better and easy accessibility. Though it is one of the attractive routes, transport of drug through the skin has remained a challenge. To overcome the challenge, vesicular system has been adopted so as to have better skin permeation of bioactive agents. Vesicular system like liposome has shown inefficiency to cross the layers of skin. Then transethosomes and nanoethosomes are employed for delivering drug into the deeper layer of skin. Nanoethosomes and transethosomes have same composition that is water, ethanol and phospholipid. Transethosome contains edge activator additionally. Due to the presence of ethanol and edge activator, it displayed enhanced skin permeation. Vesicular system gives a better patient compliance, being a non-invasive method of drug administration. In this chapter, we attempted to provide brief information about methods of preparation, characterization and pharmaceutical uses of nanoethosomes and transethosomes.
Part of the book: Nanomedicines
Nano-biotechnology has already tested its magnitude in a number of sections of existence science and biotechnology field. It is no longer hyperbole to say that in future, nano-scale method would in reality take the associated science area to the subsequent level. Since, there are technical hurdles present; despite the fact that scientists are giving their great to overcome such problems. Applications of nano-biotechnology have already been discussed in this chapter. Future potential are really associated with innovative amendment of such applications. Despite of some impedance, this technology presents giant hope in the future. It performs most important position in distinct sorts of biomedical application such as shipping of drug, gene therapy, biosensors, biomarkers and molecular imaging. It additionally leads to innovations in this field. The fundamental lookup goal of this discipline would be the innovation of early analysis approach and cure with target-specific remedy therapy. Although there would possibly be some safety worries with admire to the in vivo use of nanoparticles, research are in region to decide the nature and extent of adverse events.
Part of the book: Applications of Nanobiotechnology