Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis: Drug nanocarriers
The role that nanoparticles play in the rapidly developing field of ‘NanoMedicine’ has been discussed previously in Chapter 5. In this Chapter, we review the specific mechanisms by which such nanoparticles are designed and formulated and in which NTA has had a significant part to play.
Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis: Drug Nanocarriers
Nanoparticles play an important role in the rapidly developing field of ‘NanoMedicine’. Here, we review the specific mechanisms by which such nanoparticles are designed and formulated and in which nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) has had a significant part to play.
NTA in Nanomedicine
Villaverde (2011) reviewed the emergence of nanoparticles in translational science and medicine and Banerjee et al. (2010) had focused on the role and biomedical applications that magnetic nanoparticles play in that nanomedicine. Similarly, the impact and biomedical applications of a different specific subset of nanoparticles, nanostructured carbiobeads, has also been reviewed (Stanishevsky et al., 2011).
Wei et al. (2012), in exploring the challenges and opportunities in the advancement of nanomedicines, identified numerous needs including robust and general methods for the accurate characterization of nanoparticle size, shape, and composition as well as particle engineering for maintaining low levels of nonspecific cytotoxicity and sufficient stability during storage. They compared NTA and DLS when carrying out size analysis of nanocarriers composed of (a) trimethyl chitosan, (b) 50:50 poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA), and (c) commercial liposomes, showing that DLS rarely reported accurate data except in the more monodisperse sample types.
Bai et al. (2012) have recently presented evidence that homogeneous submicron particles can influence the growth rate of larger particles upon long-term storage in a temperature-dependent manner with implications for product stability and during which Interferon-beta-1a was thermally stressed at 50◦C for 6 hours and characterized using NTA, microflow digital imaging (MFI), and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy.
