Toxicity of Inorganic Nanoparticles Used in Targeted Drug Delivery and Other Biomedical Application: An Updated Account on Concern of Biomedical Nanotoxicology

Nano-sized inorganic materials as inorganic nanoparticles (iNPs) are widely used for diagnostics, drug delivery and theranostics purposes at preclinical and clinical for various biomedical applications intended for human health care. Per se, iNPs offer distinctive features compared to their organic counterparts while developing imaging agents, nano-drug carriers and theranostics in many aspects. Yet, transition from laboratory to clinic for iNPs restricted or slow by the concern of toxicities around them in vivo and in vitro applications. Researchers have shown that iNPs are potentially useful from a biomedical perspective but can also give rise to unexpected and hazardous toxicities to human health in short and/or in long term exposure. iNPs can potentially cause hostile effect on cells, genetic materials, tissues, organs and proteins due to their compositions, high energy state and other unique physiochemical properties at nano-scale. The Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics and interaction of iNPs with biological system are largely dependent on the physicochemical properties of iNPs, for instance size, shape, electric charge, chemical composition, surface structure, solubility and aggregation behaviour. Herein we discussed in detail about the toxicity issues (in-vitro and in-vivo) associated with the exposure of iNPs in biomedical applications.