Abstract
Drug delivery nanosystems have been thriving in recent years as a promising application in therapeutics, seeking to solve the lack of specificity of conventional chemotherapy targeting and add further features such as enhanced magnetic resonance imaging, biosensing and hyperthermia. The combination of magnetic nanoparticles and hydrogels introduces a new generation of nanosystems, the magnetogels, which combine the advantages of both nanomaterials, apart from showing interesting properties unobtainable when both systems are separated. The presence of magnetic nanoparticles allows the control and targeting of the nanosystem to a specific location by an externally applied magnetic field gradient. Moreover, the application of an alternating magnetic field (AMF) not only allows therapy through hyperthermia, but also enhances drug delivery and chemotherapeutic desired effects, which combined with the hydrogel specificity, confer a high therapeutic efficiency. Therefore, the present review summarizes the magnetogels properties and critically discusses their current and recent biomedical applications, apart from an outlook on future goals and perspectives.
Highlights
Cancer is still a major leading cause of death worldwide, with lung, colorectal, breast and prostate exhibiting the highest incidence ratio [1,2]
Besides the individual genetical predisposition to develop cancer, such high incidence is related to risk factors, such as smoking and excess body weight, which may be overcome by the promotion of healthy lifestyles, tobacco control, vaccination, early detection and improved treatments [1,2,3]
Such problems require the development of new nanosystems with high performance in therapeutics, which focus on solving the lack of conventional chemotherapy target specificity, improve the treatment of bacterial infections without the use of antibiotics and add further features such as enhanced magnetic resonance imageology, biosensing and hyperthermia
Summary
Cancer is still a major leading cause of death worldwide, with lung, colorectal, breast and prostate exhibiting the highest incidence ratio [1,2]. Taking into consideration the need to develop highly efficient nanosystems and the properties of hydrogels and magnetic nanoparticles, both have been combined to attain magnetogels.
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