Innovative Nano-Delivery Systems for Enhanced Oral Disease Therapies

Dear Colleagues,

Oral health is an essential aspect that ensures people’s well-being and should be considered in the broad context of general health. Currently, sustained efforts are made to develop efficient therapeutic approaches, in order to promote the optimal outcome in the case of oral diseases and to prevent the evolution towards severe conditions with a possible impact on systemic health.

Novel therapies are based on the local application of pharmaceutically active agents using nano-delivery systems, aimed at controlling the complex mechanisms implicated in the pathogenesis of various oral diseases, including periodontitis and oral cancer.

Early therapeutic intervention during the preclinical stages of oral diseases is the key to successful and long-lasting therapeutic outcomes and also crucial for preventing irreversible tissue destructions that could induce impaired functional alterations and require complex regenerative techniques.

Personalized and bio-functional treatments often involve the insertion of nano-delivery systems that should fulfil multiple requirements, including mucoadhesivity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, non-toxicity, controlled release of therapeutic agents, and biological properties, to promote tissue healing and restore function. Various types of biomaterials can be functionalized with synthetic and/or natural compounds capable to counteract the pathogenic pathways, to arrest or minimize degenerative morpho-physiological changes, and to ensure healing by reparative or regenerative processes.

Local drug nano-delivery systems are designed to be more targeted, as therapeutic agents can be delivered into the oral tissues in a predictable and controlled manner and can be maintained for an adequate amount of time for the therapeutic effect to occur. Thus, nano-delivery systems provide enhanced efficacy, with minimal side effects and optimized bioavailability to adjacent oral tissues. Furthermore, disadvantages of systemically delivered drugs, including side effects on other organs, insufficient drug concentration in oral tissues, and shortcomings associated with the administration route, could be avoided.

This Special Issue serves to highlight the contemporary progress and current development in the field of nano-delivery systems that enable the local administration of various synthetic and natural active ingredients and to discuss the efficacy of these novel therapies in a wide range of oral diseases. We invite articles on all aspects of local drug delivery systems, also including nanomaterials and nanoformulations, in different pre-clinical and clinical studies presenting the research currently undertaken, for this Special Issue.

Dr. Adina Bianca Bosca
Prof. Dr. Aranka Ilea
Dr. Elena Dinte
Guest Editors

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• drug delivery systems
• oral diseases
• nanomaterials
• nanoformulations
• biomaterials
• natural compounds