Nanomaterials offer several advantages as therapeutic and diagnostic tools due to design flexibility, small sizes, large surface-to-volume ratio, and ease of surface modification with multivalent ligands to increase avidity for target molecules.
Additional advantages of polymeric nanocarriers include ease in surface modification, greater encapsulation efficiency of the payload, payload protection, large surface area-to-volume ratio, and the ability to modify the rate of polymer erosion for temporal control over the release of nucleotides [17].
Other advantages include ease in surface modification, greater encapsulation efficiency of the payload, payload protection, large surface area-to-volume ratio, and slow or fast polymer erosion for temporal control over the release of drugs [ 17].
In addition, silica has ease of surface modification with a variety of functional groups using silane chemistry and commercially available organosilicon reagents for biotargeting.
Gold-based nanoparticles have received immense research attention due to their unique optical properties, biocompatibility, and ease of surface modification [1].
Dendrimers have been widely used as non-viral gene vectors due to well-defined chemical structures, high density of cationic charges and ease of surface modification.
There are many benefits attached to the drug delivery systems, which include the increase of drug stability in vivo, improved effects of retention and permeability, as well as the ease of surface modification [3, 4].
However, when optimising nanoparticles for targeted therapy their size is only one parameter that needs to be considered together with the ease of surface functionalisation, the time required for accumulation in tumour tissue, and the interaction with tumour cells.
Silica gel (SG) adsorbents, as an example of inorganic solid phases, afford several advantages over organic solid phases, such as high porosity and hydrophilicity and ease of surface modification (Ngeontae et al. 2009; Quang et al. 2012).
