New Generation Biomaterials Used in Delivery of Therapeutic Molecules

Recently, with the discovery of the RNA interference mechanism, transfection of various small nucleic acid fragments (miRNA, siRNA, shRNA and plasmid DNA etc.) has been gradually gaining importance and it is nowadays being used for silencing of the specific gene regions causing many diseases. The barriers in delivery of therapeutic nucleic acids, drug, DNA or protein vaccines, which are aimed to used in treatment of many diseases, into tissue and cells restrict the developments in this field. Consequently, polymer, inorganic and lipid-based biomaterials or composites synthetized from aforementioned biomaterials are tailored through various modification for the delivery of nucleic acids, drugs and DNA/protein vaccines. Also, nanoparticles are able to be more functionalized by optimizing or modifying them to reduce the toxic effects and to target cell being transfected. In the development of new generation therapeutics; i) new nucleic acid types, ii) surpassing biological barriers restricting transfection efficiency, iii) synthesis of more functional nano-biomaterials are being intensively studied in vitro/in vivo conditions and promising developments are being experienced. In this review article, different biomaterials are classified depending on their structures, discussed in detail and reference studies regarding therapeutic applications of these biomaterials are presented in the light of recent developments in the literature