Economic and societal dimensions of nanotechnology-enabled drug delivery

Carbon nanospheres conjugated bisphosphonates: synthesis, characterization and in vitro antimalarial activity

About 40% of the world's population lives in malaria zones where it presents a challenging health problem. Malaria treatment and prevention have been hindered by drug resistance. Bisphosphonates have been found to be active against Trypanosoma cruzi and Plasmodium falciparum that cause Chaga's disease and malaria respectively. However, bisphosphonates have a shortcoming of being rapidly removed from the bloodstream through the kidneys before reaching the target sites due to their low molecular weight. In the current study, increased bisphosphonates' efficacy for malaria treatment was attempted by conjugating bisphosphonates onto carbon nanospheres (CNSs). The synthesis of the target compounds was confirmed by SEM, TEM, EDX, FTIR, Raman and TGA. The target CNSs containing bisphosphonates were evaluated for antimalarial activity against a chloroquine-resistant strain of P. falciparum. From the free bisphosphonates to the conjugates, the results obtained revealed that there were improvements in percentage parasite kill (from -10.71% to 18%, -18.93% to 28.09% and 10.47% to 28.33% for alendronate, pamidronate and neridronate, respectively). The haemolysis assays revealed that the synthesized compound did not have a toxic impact on healthy red blood cells. The results indicate that bisphosphonates conjugated CNSs are said to be promising P. falciparum blood stage inhibitors.

Of drug administration, war and oïkos: mediating cancer with nanomedicines

This paper focuses on nano-enabled drug delivery systems (NDDS) in the context of cancer medicine. It regards NDDS as relational objects whose modes of existence are defined by their relationships with a complex biocultural environment that includes both the biological processes of our bodies and the values representations and metaphors our societies associate with cancer and cancer therapy. Within this framework the abundant use of war metaphors in NDDS --from 'smart bombs' to 'magic nano-bullets'--is discussed from various angles: in terms of therapeutic efficacy, it limits the potential of the technique by preventing the inclusion of the (patho)biological environment in the nanomedicine's mode of action. In terms of development opportunities, the military strategy of active specific targeting faces cost and complexity bottlenecks. In terms of ethical values, it favors the questionable image of cancer patients as 'fighters'. On the basis of these criticisms different metaphorical frameworks are suggested, in particular that of oïkos, whereby nanomedicine is reframed as a kind of domestic economy addressing the system-environment relationships of embodied processes with further imagination and care.