pharmaceutics Review Nanoparticle- and Nanoporous-Membrane-Mediated Delivery of Therapeutics 1, , 2, 3 4 Mostafa Mabrouk * y , Rajakumari Rajendran y, Islam E. Soliman , Mohamed M. Ashour , Hanan H. Beherei 1, Khairy M. Tohamy 3, Sabu Thomas 2, Nandakumar Kalarikkal 2, Gangasalam Arthanareeswaran 5 and Diganta B. Das 6,* 1 Refractories, Ceramics and Building Materials Department, National Research Centre, 33 El Bohouth St (former EL Tahrirst)-Dokki, Giza 12622, Egypt;
[email protected] 2 International and Inter-University Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala 686560, India;
[email protected] (R.R.);
[email protected] (S.T.);
[email protected] (N.K.) 3 Biophysics Branch, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 11884, Egypt;
[email protected] (I.E.S.);
[email protected] (K.M.T.) 4 Faculty of Engineering, Badr University, Cairo 11829, Egypt;
[email protected] 5 Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli 620015, India;
[email protected] 6 Department of Chemical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE113TU, UK * Correspondence:
[email protected] (M.M.);
[email protected] (D.B.D.); Tel.: +201097302384 (M.M.); +44-1509-222509 (D.B.D.) These authors contributed equally to this work. y Received: 1 May 2019; Accepted: 14 June 2019; Published: 21 June 2019 Abstract: Pharmaceutical particulates and membranes possess promising prospects for delivering drugs and bioactive molecules with the potential to improve drug delivery strategies like sustained and controlled release. For example, inorganic-based nanoparticles such as silica-, titanium-, zirconia-, calcium-, and carbon-based nanomaterials with dimensions smaller than 100 nm have been extensively developed for biomedical applications.