Copper Nanomaterials as Delivery System in Combating Infective Agents and Cancer

Infectious diseases portend serious threat hazards to public health globally due to the development of
the resistance to broad spectrum antimicrobials, the emergence of multidrug resistant biofilms, the
drug side-toxicity, the non-specificity of drug targeting and the inability to overcome biological barriers.
In this context, nanotechnology-based metal nanoparticles have attracted attention as nanomedicine
against different diseases for their additional capability to anchore other therapeutic contents
effectively for delivery. Owing to the large surface area to volume ratio, copper nanomaterials have
been utilized as potential anti-infective and anticarcinogenic agent in biomedical applications. Though
their higher significant efficiencies in damaging pathogenic cells have been elucidated, their nanometallic
toxicity increases other side-toxicity to healthy cells. Therefore, copper, copper oxide and
copper sulfide -nanoparticles should be surface functionalized with ligands and vesicular system to
reduce the toxic side effect for delivering to specific site of interest in a sustained-release manner. The
subject has been focused mainly on the synthesis, size and surface characteristics, mechanism of
action and biomedical applications of copper nanomaterials in damaging various infective agents and
cancer cells as probable potent drug delivery system.