Preparative techniques of nanoparticles for drug delivery

This review presents the outstanding contributions and preparative techniques in mainly polymeric nanoparticles used as drug delivery systems. Nanoparticles discussed here vary in the diameter from 10 to 1000 nm. The formation of nanoparticles composed of one polymer chain and many polymer chains is reviewed in terms of the intrapolymer and interpolymer self-association and methods of preparation and drug loading are briefly described. Several methods to prepare nanoparticles by dispersing the preformed polymers are also demonstrated, e. g., solvent evaporation method and solvent diffusion method. Particles can be produced via a polymerization process from monomers. The preparative techniques for nanoparticles include emulsion polymerization, miniemulsion polymerization, and microemulsion polymerization. For drug incorporation, preparation of core-shell nanoparticles is also described. As a novel approach to fabricate nanoparticles, supra-molecular structured materials such as dendrimers are introduced. Finally, our attempts to utilize nanoparticles for cell-death induction are stated and the concept of ‘cell-death programmed cell’ is proposed in this literature.