Nanomedicine based approaches for combating viral infections

Shah, Saurabh; Chougule, Mahavir Bhupal; Kotha, Arun K; Kashikar, Rama; Godugu, Chandraiah; Raghuvanshi, Rajeev Singh; Singh, Shashi Bala; Srivastava, Saurabh

Millions of people die each year from viral infections across the globe. There is an urgent need to overcome the existing gap and pitfalls of the current antiviral therapy which include increased dose and dosing frequency, bioavailability challenges, non-specificity, incidences of resistance and so on. These stumbling blocks could be effectively managed by the advent of nanomedicine. Current review emphasizes over an enhanced understanding of how different lipid, polymer and elemental based nanoformulations could be potentially and precisely used to bridle the said drawbacks in antiviral therapy. The dawn of nanotechnology meeting vaccine delivery, role of RNAi therapeutics in antiviral treatment regimen, various regulatory concerns towards clinical translation of nanomedicine along with current trends and implications including unexplored research avenues for advancing the current drug delivery have been discussed in detail.