Nano-Biomaterials for the Delivery of Therapeutic and Monitoring Cues for Aortic Diseases

Abstract

The aorta is the largest artery in the body, so any diseases or conditions which could cause damage to the aorta would put patients at considerable and life-threatening risk. In the management of aortic diseases, the major treatments include drug therapy, endovascular treatment, and surgical treatment, which are of great danger or with a poor prognosis. The delivery of nano-biomaterials provides a potential development trend and an emerging field where we could monitor patients' conditions and responses to the nanotherapeutics. One of the putative applications of nanotechnology is ultrasensitive monitoring of cardiovascular markers by detecting and identifying aneurysms. Moreover, the use of nanosystems for targeted drug delivery can minimize the systemic side effects and enhance drug positioning and efficacy compared to conventional drug therapies. This review shows some examples of utilizing nano-biomaterials in in vitro organ and cell culture experiments and explains some developing technologies in delivering and monitoring regenerative therapeutics.

Keywords: aortic diseases; drug delivery; nano-biomaterials; regeneration; therapeutics.

FIGURE 1

Animal models of aortic aneurysms. (A) NP accumulation after intravenous injection of EL-NP-DIR, 30 days after injury at the site of elastin damage. (B) Representative picture showing targeting to degraded elastin. (C) Accumulation of rapamycin nanoparticles in the AAA rat model. (D) Localization of EL-GNPs within aneurysmal tissues. Color arrows and arrowheads refers to the stronger signal was found in the B1 which showed more elastin damage (C1) than the control section (B2) that contained only intact elastin fibers (C2).