Inorganic Particles for Delivering Natural Products

Abstract

Natural products are complex molecules that have been widely used in traditional medicine for therapeutics and diagnostics applications. Despite their long history of use, some challenges are associated with many natural product derived pharmaceuticals, like inadequate stability, poor absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion. Medicinal chemists have been successful in addressing many of these challenges through structural modifications of the parent compound, but even so, analysis suggests that up to 20% of natural product leads are taken through unchanged as the final drug product. Even modified compounds are a challenge to administer, requiring the use of novel formulations and delivery strategies to enable the launch of an effective natural product derived drug into the market. To outwit these concerns, formulation of these natural product derived bioactive compounds using nanotechnology has been used as a potential tool in diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Compounds of organic or inorganic origin that are prepared from different metals, metal oxides, chitosan, sodium alginate, poly lactic acid, poly lactic co-glycolic acid, synthetic as well as natural origin polymers are amongst commonly used materials for development of natural product nanoformulations.