Atherosclerosis treatment with nanoagent: potential targets, stimulus signals and drug delivery mechanisms

Ting Luo; Zhen Zhang; Junbo Xu; Hanxiong Liu; Lin Cai; Gang Huang; Chunbin Wang; Yingzhong Chen; Long Xia; Xunshi Ding; Jin Wang; Xin Li

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2023.1205751

Atherosclerosis treatment with nanoagent: potential targets, stimulus signals and drug delivery mechanisms

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2023 Jun 19:11:1205751. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2023.1205751. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ting Luo^{1

2}, Zhen Zhang¹, Junbo Xu¹, Hanxiong Liu¹, Lin Cai¹, Gang Huang¹, Chunbin Wang¹, Yingzhong Chen¹, Long Xia¹, Xunshi Ding¹, Jin Wang^{1

3}, Xin Li^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Cardiology, The Third People's Hospital of Chengdu Affiliated to Southwest Jiaotong University, Key Laboratory of Advanced Technologies of Materials Ministry of Education, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China.
³ Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVDs) is the first killer of human health, and it caused up at least 31% of global deaths. Atherosclerosis is one of the main reasons caused CVDs. Oral drug therapy with statins and other lipid-regulating drugs is the conventional treatment strategies for atherosclerosis. However, conventional therapeutic strategies are constrained by low drug utilization and non-target organ injury problems. Micro-nano materials, including particles, liposomes, micelles and bubbles, have been developed as the revolutionized tools for CVDs detection and drug delivery, specifically atherosclerotic targeting treatment. Furthermore, the micro-nano materials also could be designed to intelligently and responsive targeting drug delivering, and then become a promising tool to achieve atherosclerosis precision treatment. This work reviewed the advances in atherosclerosis nanotherapy, including the materials carriers, target sites, responsive model and treatment results. These nanoagents precisely delivery the therapeutic agents to the target atherosclerosis sites, and intelligent and precise release of drugs, which could minimize the potential adverse effects and be more effective in atherosclerosis lesion.

Keywords: atherosclerosis; drug delivery; nanoagent; stimulus signals; targets.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC Project 32071328), Sichuan Science and Technology Program (2022NSFSC0809 and 2020YFH0103), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (LKPY2020-L), and Chengdu High-level Key Clinical Specialty Construction Project.