rGO Drug Delivery Formulation

As a result of the remarkable structural and chemical properties of graphene and GO, their application for drug delivery has grown rapidly in the past several years. Graphene and GO display many advantages compared with other drug delivering systems, with the ability to provide high drug loading capacity of many different drugs and therapeutic molecules using very simple preparation procedures. Both covalent and non-covalent surface modifications have been successfully used to impart specific biological activity to graphene and GO, as well as to improve the biocompatibility and colloidal stability.

Due to molecular complexity and defense mechanisms of a disease, the use of conventional therapy based on single therapeutic agents that are capable of hitting only a single target is not adequate. The concept called “combination therapy”, described as the simultaneous administration of two or more pharmacologically active agents with different mechanism of reactions, is recognized as a more efficient solution in disease treatment. Graphene and GO, owing to intrinsic physical properties on their planar structures and high surface areas, have unique advantages to load several different drugs and receptors, and are therefore used for the development of multifunctional drug delivery platforms for combined therapies.