Nanotechnology in Medicine and Pharmaceutics: Applications, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Nanotechnology has emerged as a transformative approach in medicine and pharmaceutics, providing nanoscale platforms with unique physicochemical properties for improving drug delivery, diagnosis, imaging, and therapy. This narrative review synthesizes recent literature on major nanocarriers and nanoplatforms, including liposomes, lipid and polymeric nanoparticles, micelles, dendrimers, inorganic nanoparticles, and multifunctional systems, with emphasis on targeted drug delivery, diagnostic imaging, biosensing, and theranostics. The reviewed literature highlights the potential of nanotechnology to improve drug stability, biodistribution, controlled release, and disease-associated accumulation through passive, active, and stimuli-responsive targeting strategies. Nanoplatforms can also integrate diagnostic and therapeutic functions, supporting more precise and personalized approaches to disease management. However, clinical translation remains challenging because of toxicity and biocompatibility concerns, complex nanoparticle–biological interactions, manufacturing and reproducibility issues, scalability, and regulatory requirements. Emerging strategies, including biodegradable and stimuli-responsive nanomaterials, multifunctional platforms, and artificial intelligence-assisted nanomedicine design, may help overcome these limitations. Overall, nanotechnology holds considerable promise for advancing modern medicine and pharmaceutics, but successful clinical implementation will require rigorous safety evaluation, standardized characterization, scalable manufacturing, and closer integration between nanomaterial design and clinical needs.

کلیدواژه ها:

nanomedicine ، nanocarriers ، targeted drug delivery ، diagnostic imaging ، theranostics ، clinical translation