Organelle-Specific Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology

A Comprehensive Review of This New, Interdisciplinary Field ofBiomedical Research

The subcellular, organelle–specific delivery of drugs has becomethe new frontier for drug delivery. Volkmar Weissig helped toinitiate this development when, in 1998, he proposed a completelynovel approach to delivering drugs to particular cell organelles,namely to mitochondria. A few years later, he was joined by GerardD′Souza, and since then, they have been pioneering the field ofmitochondria–specific drug delivery. Organelle–SpecificPharmaceutical Nanotechnology is their attempt to provide aclear overview of the state of the art in nanotechnology applied tosubcellular drug delivery and probing the intercellular milieu inliving cells.

This book brings together authors from several scientificdisciplines to provide a broad view of the subject. Discussed infull detail are the various approaches to nanocarrier mediatedbioactives to cell organelles, as well as emerging research methodsfor the identification of subcellular targeting ligands and thestudy of subcellular transport processes. All chapters have beenwritten following a college course like fashion, with asmooth transition from simple principles and methods to morecomplex material and research being conducted in the field.

Organelle–Specific Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology thusprovides "need to know" information to every scientist interestedin the development of new and effective nanotechnology–basedtherapeutic approaches. It will be of particular interest toscientists, postdoctoral investigators, and graduate students inthe fields of drug delivery, subcellular transport phenomena, orthe design of novel nanotechnological tools for biomedicalapplications.