ABSTRACT
Microfluidic technology is a scientific technology that precisely controls and manipulates fluids in micro-nano-scale space, and has become one of the research hotspots in the field of nanomedicine. It has the ability to scale the basic functions of biological and chemical laboratories, including sample preparation, reaction, separation and detection, to a few square centimeters of chip. Compared with traditional approaches, microfluidic technology is equipped with many advantages in the development of nanomedicine carriers, such as controlling quality precisely, high reproducibility, fast and effective. Herein, this paper provides the brief introduction about the microfluidic technology and its application in the preparation of nanoparticulate drug carriers, which including polymer nanoparticles, lipid nanoparticles and hybrid nanoparticles. This review will provide ideas and references in utilization of microfluidic technology accurately and reasonably and also bring some prospects for its future development and challenges.
ABSTRACT
Nanoparticles hold great potential in the improvement of the therapeutic activities of many drugs. Synthetic approaches are dominant in the conventional approach for nanoparticles design and engineering strategies. However, combination of synthetic nanoparticles with natural biomaterials have recently gained much attention. By taking inspiration from nature, cell-derived nanomedicine delivery system has been created, which is a biomimetic platform consisting of a nanoparticulate core coated with cell or cell membrane. Compared to the conventional drug delivery systems, this novel system combines the unique functionalities of cells and engineering versatility of synthetic nanomaterials for effective delivery of therapeutic agents. With existing of cell, nanomedicine has significantly improved the biocompatibility, accurate delivery and long half-life in circulation as well as reduced the toxicity and side effect of drugs. Moreover, the delivery system can interact with the incredibly complex biological systems that exist within the body, such as actively targeting the inflammatory sites and tumors. Hence, it can be applied to drug delivery, tumor radiotherapy, and vaccine preparation. The cell-derived nanomedicine delivery system emerging as a novel delivery strategy, have the potential to significantly advance the nanomedicine to improve the therapeutic efficacy. The recent research in characteristics, preparation and application of erythrocyte, mononuclear phagocyte, bacteria and tumor cell as nanomedicine delivery carrier are reviewed.