Description

ABSTRACT

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are type of nano-materials which have interesting physicaland chemical properties such as thermal, magnetic, surface and chemical properties. These properties make CNTs as promising opportunities for biomedical research and applications. Because of these interesting properties, CNTs were investigated for their drug delivery characteristics to deliver many therapeutic agents such as anticancer, peptides, vaccines, and nucleic acids into specific target cells. Results obtained gave the CNTs great interest in pharmaceutical development field as carriers with promising development future. CNTs were found to have large surface area which gives them the ability to traverse amphipathic cell membranes and flexible interactions with their cargo. Moreover, these interesting features give CNTs the ability to deliver many types of nucleic acids effectively into their targets. In this review, we discuss the different aspects and properties of CNTs and the use of different types of CNTs as drug delivery system for the delivery of many nucleic acids such as siRNA and miRNA.

Keywords: Carbon Nanotubes, Nucleic Acids, Drug Delivery, Anticancer, Nanoparticles