Together with the regenerative medicine (RM) and personalized therapies,
nanomedicine represents one of the fields of advanced therapies that are sought to
drastically revolutionize heath care and significantly improve quality of life at a global
level. Based on nanoscience and nanotechnology, nanomedicine methods have already
entered the field of clinical application by means of drug delivery solutions and
contrast agents for medical Imagistics while nano-based carrier and nano-biosensors
are in different stages of testing for clinical applications.
The use of nano-scaled materials, particularly of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) has
evolved as an increasing field of research in life sciences. Both physical and chemical
properties of MNPs are relevant for a wide scale of medical application for the
diagnostic, prevention and treatment of various diseases.
Iron oxide based MNPs are being explored as agents for cellular magnetic separation
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or drug delivery. MNPs have been proposed as
tracking agents for cell delivery in various cellular therapy scenarios. In the context of
multimodal therapies for the treatment of solid malignancies, the use of hyperthermia
(HT) as an adjuvant therapy can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century.
During the last decades, different forms of HT have been used in combination with
radio- or chemotherapy. However, local and systemic side effects on healthy tissues are
limiting its application. MNPs-based HT treatment of malignancies has gained
significant interest in the recent years as they are able to deliver local targeted HT of
improved precision compared to the traditional methods.
MNPs are tested as modalities to increase efficiency of scaffold fabrication, scaffold
functionalization and cell patterning in tissue engineering. MNPs bound to cells can be
used to deliver highly controllable mechanical stimulation while within a magnetic field, improving stem cell differentiation especially to musculoskeletal lineages. Cells
that have incorporated MNPs or magnetic cationic liposomes can be manipulated to
construct three dimensional structures for scaffold free tissue engineering strategies
such as cell sheet fabrication, spheroid formation or cell clustering.
Placed at the frontier between nanomedicine, tissue regeneration and cell therapy, this
chapter describes the current applications of MNPs for the design of advanced
therapies as well as future avenues for research and development in this increasingly
impacting field.
Keywords: Nanomedicine, Magnetic nanoparticles, Regenerative medicine, Stem
cell therapy, Tissue engineering, Nanotoxicity, Nanoparticle internalization,
Magnetic actuation, Cellular imaging, Cell tagging, Magnetic mediated drug
delivery, Magnetic scaffolds, Magnetofection.
