Copper Nanomaterials as Delivery System in Combating Infective Agents and Cancer

Abstract

Infectious diseases portend serious threat hazards to public health globally due to the development of the resistance to broad spectrum antimicrobials, the emergence of multidrug resistant biofilms, the drug side-toxicity, the non-specificity of drug targeting and the inability to overcome biological barriers. In this context, nanotechnology-based metal nanoparticles have attracted attention as nanomedicine against different diseases for their additional capability to anchore other therapeutic contents effectively for delivery. Owing to the large surface area to volume ratio, copper nanomaterials have been utilized as potential anti-infective and anticarcinogenic agent in biomedical applications. Though their higher significant efficiencies in damaging pathogenic cells have been elucidated, their nano-metallic toxicity increases other side-toxicity to healthy cells. Therefore, copper, copper oxide and copper sulfide -nanoparticles should be surface functionalized with ligands and vesicular system to reduce the toxic side effect for delivering to specific site of interest in a sustained-release manner. The subject has been focused mainly on the synthesis, size and surface characteristics, mechanism of action and biomedical applications of copper nanomaterials in damaging various infective agents and cancer cells as probable potent drug delivery system.