Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery

This forward-looking book focuses on the recent advances in nanomedicine and drug delivery. It outlines the extraordinary new tools that have become available in nanomedicine and presents an integrated set of perspectives that describe where we are now and where we should be headed to put nanomedicine devices into applications as quickly as possible, while also considering the possible dangers of nanomedicine.

The book considers the full range of nanomedicinal applications that employ molecular nanotechnology inside the human body, from the perspective of a future practitioner in an era of widely available nanomedicine.

Written by some of the most innnovative minds in medicine and engineering, this unique volume will help professionals understand cutting-edge and futuristic areas of research that can have tremendous payoff in terms of improving human health. Readers will find insightful discussions of nanostructured intelligent materials and devices that are considered technically feasible and which have a high potential to produce advances in medicine in the near future.

Topics include:

• Health benefits of phytochemicals and the application of colloidal delivery systems
• Study of non-covalent attachment of recombinant targeting proteins to polymer-modified Adenoviral gene delivery vectors
• The role of nanoparticles as adjuvants for mucosal vaccine delivery
• Poly(amido-amine)s as delivery styems for biologically active substances
• Antimicrobial activity of silver nanoparticles
• Nanomedicine in the use of cancer treatment
• Dendrimers, capsules based on lipid vesicles for drug delivery
• Many other recent achievements

Dr. Mathew Sebastian has a degree in surgery (1976) with specialization in Ayurveda. He holds several diplomas in acupuncture, neural therapy (pain therapy), manual therapy and vascular diseases. He was a missionary doctor in Mugana Hospital, Bukoba in Tansania, Africa (1976- 1978) and underwent surgical training in different hospitals in Austria, Germany, and India for more than 10 years. Since 2000 he is the doctor in charge of the Ayurveda and Vein Clinic in Klagenfurt, Austria. At present he is a Consultant Surgeon at Privatclinic Maria Hilf, Klagenfurt. He is a member of the scientific advisory committee of the European Academy for Ayurveda, Birstein, Germany, and TAM advisory committee (Traditional Asian Medicine, Sector Ayurveda) of the Austrian Ministry for Health, Vienna. He conducted an International Ayurveda Congress in Klagenfurt, Austria, in 2010. He has several publications to his name.

Neethu Ninan is doing joint doctoral research in nanomedicine and tissue engineering at both the University of South Brittany (Lorient, France) and the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, India.

Dr. A. K. Hagh holds a BSc in urban and environmental engineering from the University of North Carolina (USA); an MSc in mechanical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University (USA); a DEA in applied mechanics, acoustics, and materials from the Universite de Technologie de Compiegne (France); and a PhD in engineering sciences from the Universite de Franche-Comte (France).

He has written about 1000 original articles, 250 monographs, and 170 chapters in 40 volumes. It is apparent from this work that he has made valuable contributions to the theory and practice of chemical engineering, heat and mass transfer, porous media, industrial drying, polymers, nanofibers, and nanocomposites.

Dr Haghi is Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Chemoinformatics and Chemical Engineering and Editor-In-Chief of the Polymers Research Journal. He is an editorial board member for many US and internationally published journals and is also a Senior Editor for Apple Academic Press (US and Canada).

He served as an associate member of the University of Ottawa and was a member of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering. He currently serves as a faculty member at the University of Guilan (Iran).