Chapter 8: Nanoparticles as Drug Delivery Vehicles for the Therapy of Inflammatory Disorders

The ever-exploding scientific advancements in the field of nanotechnology have enabled its integration into biosciences and medicine. Such interdisciplinary approaches allow researchers to engineer novel tools for diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis of different clinical complications. One of the most successful nano-tools that have emerged in recent years are nano-drug delivery devices. The use of such nano-sized carriers to load therapeutic agents (drugs, vaccines, biomolecules, and enzymes) aid in overcoming their pharmacological and toxicological hurdles through site-specific and controlled drug delivery. This chapter is a comprehensive account on the recent developments in the delivery of anti-inflammatory drugs using nanocarriers. Here, various kinds and types of nanocarriers and their countless inherent and engineered properties which make them ideal for delivering anti-inflammatory drugs, and the special characteristics of inflammation and inflammatory cells and tissues, which make them vulnerable to these nano-tools, will be discussed. The potential active and passive targeting approaches using drug-loaded nanocarriers for various inflammatory disorders are also elaborated.