Recent Advances in Nanocarrier Based Therapeutic and Diagnostic Approaches in Tuberculosis

Abstract

Tuberculosis is the second most fatal infectious disease; each year, it causes millions of deaths worldwide. Although several anti-TB drugs are currently available, the problem with these drugs is that they require a prolonged duration of treatment, with high drug doses. In addition, patient non-adherence to therapy subsequently leads to the development of multidrug-resistant and ex-tensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. Therefore, we need to develop an effective and robust nano-carrier-based drug delivery system to overcome these issues and improve the therapeutic potential of drug dose/duration and patient compliance. This review article focuses on the cur-rently available various nanotechnology-based therapeutic approaches, including lipid nanopar-ticles, polymeric particles, carbon nanotubes, glucan, and alginate-based nano-carrier systems for effective anti-TB drug delivery to host macrophage for mycobacterium killing. Finally, we also present some promising recent nanotechnology-based mycobacterial detection systems us-ing silver nanoparticles, silica nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles, quantum dots, and magnet-ic barcode assay that have recently emerged as the latest diagnostic tool. Functionalized nano-materials for emerging Aggregation-induced photodynamic therapy as next-generation theranostics have also been discussed as a novel option for TB diagnosis and therapy.