Nanotechnology in the Treatment of Infectious Diseases: A Review

The recent development of nanotechnology gradually become the trend of the world which has also revolutionized the pharmaceutical fields. Nanotechnology is the method used to produce nanoscale particles which can be applied in various aspects such as diagnostics and treatments. Meantime, an infectious disease also becomes a major cause of morbidity and mortality in humans nowadays. The small size of infectious disease agents has been a great concern in some of the diagnostics, preventions, and treatments are hard to achieve a desirable effect. In this way, nanotechnology becomes the key to the improvement of the pharmaceutical application’s performance for infectious diseases. Vaccination is one of the prevention methods to control the spread of infectious diseases. However, some vaccines lead to serious complications due to the difficulty of accessing and damaging infectious disease agents. By utilizing nanotechnology, vaccines delivered via lipid nanoparticles and viral-vectored vaccines are developed to improve the safety profile and the immune response of the vaccination. Besides prevention, nanotechnology also has been used in the drug delivery system and therapeutic drugs for infectious diseases. A nanoparticle-based drug delivery system can enhance the treatment outcome from various aspects such as the biocompatibility of the drug, the stability of the drug, and the capability of the drug in different drug delivery systems.