Enhancing the Therapeutic Potential of Nanomedicines by Modifying Surface Characteristics

Abstract: Nanomedicines have been used over time because of their significant impact on human health care for the prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of a wide range of illnesses. Nanomedicines must be adequately characterized in order to develop well-defined nanomedicines with therapeutic value. The surface charge of nanomedicines plays an important role to determine how they interact with biological components where the zeta potential is a useful tool for describing the chemical composition of particle surfaces, such as functional groups, adsorption/desorption, and so on. The main goal of this review is to present an overview of the impact of nanomedicines' surface charges on absorption, distribution, metabolism, and in vivo drug release, for example negatively charged nanoparticles diffuse well through mucus for mucosal drug delivery, whereas positively charged nanoparticles are preferred for transvascular transport, tumor penetration, and cellular absorption. In this review, we also highlight how to improve nanomedicines' therapeutic potential by altering their surface characteristics with the help of various polymers. Future research should be focused on enhancing the therapeutic efficiency of nanomedicines by changing their surface properties, as well as conducting in-depth mechanistic studies by changing the surface properties of nanomedicines for the efficient treatment of diseases with low or no nanomedicine toxicity.