Abstract
Biodegradable and biocompatible polymeric nanomaterials, serving as biomedical devices have garnered significant attention as a promising solution to therapeutic management of many chronic diseases. Despite their potentials, majority of the synthetic nanomaterials used in biomedical applications lack crucial properties, for example, ligand binding sites, responsiveness, and switchability to efficiently deliver intended drugs to the target site. Advancements in manipulating nanoscale geometry have incurred the incorporation of triggered release mechanism within the nanomaterials design. This expanded their potential applications beyond nanocarriers to theranostics exhibiting both tandem drug delivery and diagnostic capabilities. Additionally, it highlights possibilities to design nanomaterials that could translate chemical response(s) to photometric display, thus making affordable biosensors and actuators readily available for biomedical exploitation. It is anticipated that, in the near future, these implementations could be made to access some of the most difficult therapy locations, for example, blood brain barrier to provide efficient management of Alzheimer, Huntington, and other neurodegenerative diseases. This review aims to serve as a reference platform by providing the readers with the overview of the recent advancements and cutting-edge techniques employed in the production and instrumentation of such nanomaterials.
Highlights
The convergence of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and polymer science is enabling the development of new smart nanomaterials with diverse macromolecular architecture that can be utilized in biomedical applications
In another study reported by Huang et al [101], the primary NH2 groups of cationized functionalized bovine serum albumin (BSA) were coupled with mercaptothiazoline-activated pNIPAm polymer chains which were used as modules to produce conjugated protein-polymer nanovesicles that serve as a drug carrier device (Figure 6)
Majority of the synthetic nanomaterials used in biomedical applications presented a number of deficiencies
Summary
The convergence of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and polymer science is enabling the development of new smart nanomaterials with diverse macromolecular architecture that can be utilized in biomedical applications. Multistimuli responsive nanomaterials based on amphiphilic polymer composites containing hydrophilic and lipophilic macromers with environment-sensitive micellar properties have been reported [8] The ability of these materials to respond to the change in environmental conditions due to switchable functionality has been explored in designing several bioinspired nanomaterials. Recent advancements in the fundamental understanding of biotechnological and proteomic research have led to the development of new synthetic approaches [20] These have made possible the fabrication of stimuli responsive “smart” nanomaterials within the grasp of the biomaterials research community. This review surveyed and evaluated the recent advancements in the production and instrumentation of smart polymeric nanomaterials and their composites as well as their biomedical applications It provides the readers with some highlights on newly employed techniques in the fabrication of such nanomaterials
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