Components of essential oils as building blocks of functional materials for nanomedicine: Metal-phenolic networks and self-assembly approaches

Abstract

Phytophenols (PPs) are major components of essential oils and are known for their medical applications associated to their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticancer, and antimicrobial characteristics, and to their cardio-, kidney-, lung-, UV-, and neuro-protective properties. As strong reductive agents, PPs can form, by self-assembly/polymerization (SAP), thin layers and nanostructures including nanoparticles (NPs) of interesting medical properties. PPs like tannic acid (TA), caffeic acid, pyrogallol, gallic acid (GA), and the phenolic amine dopamine, among others, are used as assembling units. The high coordination affinities of PPs allow them to act as raw materials of inorganic-organic networks for applications in medicine. These supra-molecular structures are formed by central metal ions and phenolic building blocks, such as TA or GA, and are known as metal-phenolic networks (MPNs). MPNs and SAP can develop on materials of diverse topography and composition like hollow capsules, hydrogels, PPs-based NPs, etc., with main applications in cancer but increasing developments for infection, cytoprotection, diabetes, and cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases, as well as theragnostic. The construction of these diverse innovative structures (MPNs and SAP) and their applications in medicine will be reviewed in this chapter.