Mitochondria-Targeted Nanoparticles: A Promising Drug Delivery System

Abstract

A variety of diseases including neurodegenerative, neuromuscular diseases, diabetes, obesity and cancer are considered to be caused by mitochondrial dysfunction. Efficient delivery of therapeutic agents to mitochondria is necessary to treat these diseases. In the past decade, mitochondria targeted nanoparticles have been shown to be a promising deliver system. In this review, functionalized nanosystems targeting mitochondria are discussed. More efforts are needed to bring these novel nanosystems from bench top to bed side.

Dual Stimuli-Responsive Multifunctional Silicon Nanocarriers for Specifically Targeting Mitochondria in Human Cancer Cells

“…Mitochondria are double-membrane-bound organelles for producing cellular ATP, regulating intracellular calcium homeostasis, generating reactive oxygen species, activating the intrinsic apoptotic pathway, and producing hormones; therefore, aberrations in mitochondrial physiology are involved in various diseases [1,2]. Cancer cells predominantly produce chemical energy via a high rate of glycolysis, even in the presence of abundant oxygen.…”