Nanocrystals for Improving the Biopharmaceutical Performance of Hydrophobic Drugs

Abstract

The term nanometer indicates a scale order of 10E-9 m in spatial dimension, which is above thetypical dimensions of the atomic diameter by only one order of magnitude (10E-10 m). Therefore, for a material to be considered as nanomaterials, at least one of their dimensions must range between 1 and 1000 nm. The latest advances focused on the manipulation and control of materials in the nanoscale range have opened up new horizons in several fields of science, including medicine. To understand the possibilities offered by this novel technology, it is crucial to realize that nanostructures present sizes similar to large biological macromolecules such as enzymes and receptors, being much smaller than human cells (which are 10?20 mm in diameter) and than many of their organelles. In the biomedical field, it is expected to have a great potential in in vivo and in vitro diagnosis and in specialized drug delivery systems as a consequence of the optical, physical, and chemical characteristics associated to the small size.