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Pravin Kumar, Mahendra Singh Ashawat, Vinay Pandit
Department of Pharmaceutics, Laureate Institute of Pharmacy, Kangra, H. P, India-177101
* Corresponding Author E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT:
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been profoundly investigated for drug delivery applications. Various widely used small drugs molecules when conjugated either covalently or non-covalently with the AuNPs, showed improved therapeutic effect with reduced dose and adverse effects as compared to drug alone. This review focuses on therapeutic efficiency of AuNPs-small drug molecule conjugates as anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, anti-retroviral and anti-arthritic agents. The basic approaches of conjugation, brief of procedure followed for activity determination and mechanism of action of conjugates have also been discussed.
KEY WORDS: Gold, Nanoparticles, Drug conjugates, Anti-cancer, Anti-bacterial, Drug delivery.
INTRODUCTION:
Michael Fraday, in the year 1957 first described the gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), as colored solution formation on reduction of gold chloride in presence of sodium citrate.(1)Since that time, AuNPs have been developed by different techniques and investigated for different purposes in medical science. Gold nanoparticles have been exhaustively investigated and established for its use in several fields of medical science viz. immune diagnostics, DNA diagnostics and biosensors etc.(2) Further, AuNPs have been investigated for application as anti-neoplastic, anti-arthritic, antibacterial and anti-diabetic agent. Hirsch et al. reported the use of AuNPs in thermal ablation therapy of tumors.(3) Christopher et al. and Leonaviciene et al. have studied the anti-arthritic property of colloidal gold in animal models.(4), (5)Li et al. have reported the use of AuNPs as very efficaous antibacterial at low dose against multi drug resistant pathogens.(6) Venkatachalam etal. have reported the significant anti-diabetic effect of AuNPs in alloxan induced diabetic male albino rats.(7)
Received on 10.10.2017 Accepted on 18.12.2017
Asian Pharma Press All Right Reserved
Asian J. Pharm. Tech. 2018; 8 (1): 52-62.
DOI:10.5958/2231-5713.2018.00009.0
Daisy et al. have reported the anti-diabetic property of AuNPs on streptozotocin induced adult male albino wistar rats.(8)
The important advantage of AuNPs is that it can be synthesized easily in various shapes viz. spherical, rod shaped, core shell and many forms with varied sizes from 1nm to more than 100 nm.(9) AuNPs have been considered as an useful delivery vehicles for the different therapeutic agents. These agents include small drug molecules and large macromolecules such as protein, peptides, DNA and RNA.(10) Large...