Abstract
Medical applications and biotechnological advances, including magnetic resonance imaging, cell separation and detection, tissue repair, magnetic hyperthermia and drug delivery, have strongly benefited from employing iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) due to their remarkable properties, such as superparamagnetism, size and possibility of receiving a biocompatible coating. Ongoing research efforts focus on reducing drug concentration, toxicity, and other side effects, while increasing efficacy of IONPs-based treatments. This review highlights the methods of synthesis and presents the most recent reports in the literature regarding advances in drug delivery using IONPs-based systems, as well as their antimicrobial activity against different microorganisms. Furthermore, the toxicity of IONPs alone and constituting nanosystems is also addressed.
Highlights
The development of nanotechnology has provided resources to various applications in the medical field, leading to significant advances in terms of diagnosis, biological detection, therapy and drug delivery [1,2,3,4,5]
This review provides conceptual information on methods of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) synthesis, addressing the main advantages and disadvantages, and drugs bound to IONPs in the production of drug-delivery nanosystems
The size of the microemulsion, whether direct or indirect, may be controlled by adjusting the ratio of water, oil and surfactant, which leads to the IONPs size control [29,43,44]
Summary
The development of nanotechnology has provided resources to various applications in the medical field, leading to significant advances in terms of diagnosis, biological detection, therapy and drug delivery [1,2,3,4,5] In this context, magnetic nanoparticles comprise important characteristics that make them attractive for a variety of biomedical applications, including contrast agents in magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) [6], cell separation and detection [7,8], treatment for hyperthermia [9] and drug delivery [10]. Hydrophobic and negatively charged nanoparticles tend to suffer proteic opsonization and are quickly recognized by phagocytic cells [20], resulting in faster clearance These and other IONPs limitations, such as oxidation and cell toxicity, can be overcome by an adequate surface-coating, implying that the success of a IONPs-based nanosystem is directly related to the properties of the coating material. A set of considerations is made on IONPs toxicological aspects, as well as advances on coating strategies to elaborate more biocompatible nanosystems
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