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Review
. 2023 Jul 14:11:1227843.
doi: 10.3389/fchem.2023.1227843. eCollection 2023.

Progress in drug delivery and diagnostic applications of carbon dots: a systematic review

Hemlata Kaurav  1 , Dhriti Verma  1 , Amit Bansal  2 , Deepak N Kapoor  1 , Sandeep Sheth  3
Affiliations
Review

Progress in drug delivery and diagnostic applications of carbon dots: a systematic review

Hemlata Kaurav et al. Front Chem. .

Abstract

Carbon dots (CDs), which have particle size of less than 10 nm, are carbon-based nanomaterials that are used in a wide range of applications in the area of novel drug delivery in cancer, ocular diseases, infectious diseases, and brain disorders. CDs are biocompatible, eco-friendly, easy to synthesize, and less toxic with excellent chemical inertness, which makes them very good nanocarrier system to deliver multi-functional drugs effectively. A huge number of researchers worldwide are working on CDs-based drug delivery systems to evaluate their versatility and efficacy in the field of pharmaceuticals. As a result, there is a tremendous increase in our understanding of the physicochemical properties, diagnostic and drug delivery aspects of CDs, which consequently has led us to design and develop CDs-based theranostic system for the treatment of multiple disorders. In this review, we aim to summarize the advances in application of CDs as nanocarrier including gene delivery, vaccine delivery and antiviral delivery, that has been carried out in the last 5 years.

Keywords: bioimaging; carbon dots; drug delivery; gene delivery; nanocarriers.

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Conflict of interest statement

Author AB was employed by Perrigo Company Plc. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Applications of CDs in therapeutic drug delivery.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Mechanism of CDs for antimicrobial activity.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
CDs theranostic application in cancer treatment.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Hollow CDs (HCDs) for sustained and pH responsive drug delivery of doxorubicin (DOX). In vitro drug release study showed 74.7% of DOX release from HCDs at pH 5.0, 42.6% at pH 6.5% and 29.5% at pH 7.4 after 80 h. In case of free DOX release profile, 60% of the drug was released after 2 h (Zhang et al., 2019a).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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