Nanomedicine in cardiovascular therapy: recent advancements

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is comprised of a group of disorders affecting the heart and blood vessels of the human body and is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Current therapy for CVD is limited to the treatment of already established disease, and it includes pharmacological and/or surgical procedures, such as percutaneous coronary intervention with stenting and coronary artery bypass grafting. However, lots of complications have been raised with these modalities of treatment, including systemic toxicity with medication, stent thrombosis with percutaneous coronary intervention and nonsurgical candidate patients for coronary artery bypass grafting. Nanomedicine has emerged as a potential strategy in dealing with these obstacles. Applications of nanotechnology in medicine are already underway and offer tremendous promise. This review explores the recent developments of nanotechnology in the field of CVD and gives an insight into its potential for diagnostics and therapeutics applications. The authors also explore the characteristics of the widely used biocompatible nanomaterials for this purpose and evaluate their opportunities and challenges for developing novel nanobiotechnological tools with high efficacy for biomedical applications, such as radiological imaging, vascular implants, gene therapy, myocardial infarction and targeted delivery systems.