Nanoclay: A Novel Drug Delivery Carrier

Safe and clinically useful therapeutic drug delivery systems must be developed to fight fatal diseases and disorders like cancer, hypertension, and diabetes, among others. However, these systems face significant development challenges due to their solubility, stability, permeation, cytotoxicity, drug entrapment, and loading issues. Imitations can be avoided by creating innovative drug delivery systems based on nanomaterials, such as nanoclays. As layered nanostructures, nanoclays have many advantageous qualities, such as chemical inertness, colloids (dispersed in blood plasma), a large surface area, and viscosity. Nanoclays are qualified for use as a drug delivery carrier for anti-cancer, antihypertensive, antioxidant, and anti-diabetes medicines based on these qualities. This study discusses the evolution and use of nanoclay in drug delivery research. Clays of various sorts (kaolinite, halloysite, and montmorillonite) have been employed to generate prolonged and targeted drug delivery with enhanced pharmacokinetic characteristics. The modified clay demonstrated optimal drug loading, trapping, release, electrostatic interaction (van der Waals interaction), ion exchange reaction, and immobilization. Finally, nanoclay was employed to create a drug delivery system with enhanced pharmacokinetic properties for proteins, DNA, and pharmaceuticals. Many earlier research investigations have also reported its usage in bio-imaging, tissue engineering, gene transfer, and stem cell separation.