The design and testing of multifunctional nanoparticles for drug delivery applications

Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize the medical profession by improving on traditional drug delivery methods and transforming how disease and injury are currently diagnosed, monitored, and treated. The effective delivery of small-molecule drugs, peptides, and proteins to a site of disease or injury has faced considerable barriers in the past. These include premature clearance from the body, off-site toxicity, and poor bioavailability or pharmacokinetics. Nanoparticles can be used to help improve these characteristics by aiding delivery of therapeutics that otherwise show little efficacy without assisted delivery. This chapter contains two separate yet highly related sections. The first section will provide a review and introduction to the field of nanoparticles developed for drug delivery. This introduction will cover a range of different nanoparticle formulations and their associated merits and pitfalls. The second portion will provide an insight into some of our research on the development and characterization of a multifunctional poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) nanoparticle system designed for therapeutic delivery. Here we show this multifunctional nanoparticle system and its ability to effectively deliver a therapeutic peptide designed to modulate L-type calcium channel activity following cardiac ischemia-reperfusion injury. These results have broad applicability beyond the treatment of this injury into a range of disease and injury sites that require rapid cellular delivery of an appropriate therapeutic payload. This nanoparticle system provides sound proof-of-concept for peptide delivery ex vivo. With further testing it has the potential to change how we currently treat one of the major contributors to cardiac failure.