A Safe‐by‐Design Strategy towards Safer Nanomaterials in Nanomedicines

Abstract

The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201805391.The marriage of nanotechnology and medicine offers new opportunities to fight against human diseases. Benefiting from their unique optical, thermal, magnetic, or redox properties, a wide range of nanomaterials have shown potential in applications such as diagnosis, drug delivery, or tissue repair and regeneration. Despite the considerable success achieved over the past decades, the newly emerging nanomedicines still suffer from an incomplete understanding of their safety risks, and of the relationships between their physicochemical characteristics and safety profiles. Herein, the most important categories of nanomaterials with clinical potential and their toxicological mechanisms are summarized, and then, based on this available information, an overview of the principles in developing safe-by-design nanomaterials for medical applications and of the recent progress in this field is provided. These principles may serve as a starting point to guide the development of more effective safe-by-design strategies and to help identify the major knowledge and skill gaps.

Inflammation Increases Susceptibility of Human Small Airway Epithelial Cells to Pneumonic Nanotoxicity

“…[1] Examples of engineered NM include metal-based NM such as TiO 2 , ZnO, Ag, and CuO obtained. [18] However, even when normalized to the same particle type with identical materials-centric characteristics, the adverse effects of NM may not be equally distributed among population groups and individuals, especially in persons with pre-existing inflammatory diseases. Differences in susceptibility and vulnerability to NM exposure may have a large disproportionate effect on the health of certain populations.…”

Carbon Nanomaterials Applied for the Treatment of Inflammatory Diseases: Preclinical Evidence

“…The number of nanomedicines in clinical trials is constantly rising. [153][154][155] In-deed, more than 50 drug formulations containing nanomaterials have been approved by the FDA for clinical use, while hundreds of clinical trials are ongoing. [156] Although the number of FDA-approved and marketed nanomedicines is significant and growing, it is much lower for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, [157] while carbon nanomaterials remain mainly at the level of laboratory research.…”

Nanocharacterization, Materials Modeling, and Research Integrity as Enablers of Sound Risk Assessment: Designing Responsible Nanotechnology

“…Materials modeling facilitates the calculation and prediction of intrinsic (e.g., size, aspect ratio) and extrinsic physicochemical properties (binding energy, dissolution rate) that are difficult or impossible to measure, related to surface reactive characteristics (more relevant to toxicity). [ 33 ] Thus, it introduces time and cost‐effective alternative to experimental measurements and broadens candidate materials range in developing targeted performance (e.g., Safe‐by‐Design [ 32,34 ] ). nano‐QSAR models are being developed and used for physicochemical properties estimation, like dustiness, and solubility/dissolution.…”