Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Gold Nanoparticles: Synthesis and Applications in Drug Delivery

AK Khan¹, R Rashid¹, G Murtaza² , A Zahra¹

¹Department of Chemistry; ²Department of Pharmacy, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, 22060 Abbottabad, Pakistan.

For correspondence:- Murtaza Email: gmdogar356@gmail.com Tel:+923142082826

Received: 3 April 2014 Accepted: 2 June 2014 Published: 25 July 2014

Citation: Khan A, Rashid R, Murtaza G, Zahra A. Gold Nanoparticles: Synthesis and Applications in Drug Delivery. Trop J Pharm Res 2014; 13(7):1169-1177 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v13i7.23

© 2014 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

This review is focused essentially on the synthesis and applications of gold nanoparticles in the field of medicine and targeted drug delivery. Nanotechnology has become one of the most interesting and advanced areas of research in this field. Among nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles demonstrate special advantages in this field due to their unique properties, small size and high surface area-to-volume ratio. These particles have been widely used in various biomedical applications and drug delivery systems due to their inert nature, stability, high dispersity, non-cytotoxicity and biocompatibility.

Keywords: Biosynthesis, Gold nanoparticles, Biomedical applications, Targeted drug delivery, Nanotechnology