Nanophase Ceramics for Improved Drug Delivery: Current Opportunities and Challenges

Introduction After more than a decade of research and development, nanotechnology has reshaped the traditional thinking (or lack thereof) of using ceramics for drug delivery. Although drug delivery has been a polymer-dominated field, the blossoming of nanotechnology means that ceramic materials are now showing much promise for numerous drug delivery applications. Typically, nanotechnology is defined as the use of materials and systems whose structures and components exhibit novel and significantly changed properties when control is gained at the nanoscale (specifically, <100 nm or <10–7 m).1 For ceramics, this means fabricating ceramics whose grain or particle sizes are within the range of 1 nm to 100 nm). Nanophase ceramics already have been widely used in a broad spectrum of biomedical applications, and now drug delivery is one of the fastest emerging and developing arenas for nanoceramics, drawing increasing attention over the past few years. Indeed, researchers are realizing that the extraordinary characteristics of nanophase ceramics (including size, structural advantages, highly active surfaces, unique physical and chemical properties and ease of modification) suggest that they can be excellent platforms for drug transportation and controlled prolonged release compared with polymeric platforms. The advances nanophase ceramics are making in drug delivery seem to promise that these materials will solve many of today’s challenging medical problems. by Lei Yang, Brian W. Sheldon and Thomas J. Webster