Nanotechnological Systems and Lung: A Perfect Combination for Lung Pharmaceutical Applications

Nowadays, lungs are the most common organs affected by diseases due to climate change, tobacco smoking, pollution and genetic factors. Conventional pharmacotherapy (oral medication or injection) is poorly selective; this causes toxicity problems and numerous systemic side effects. Furthermore, although pulmonary administration is an interesting route of drug administration for the treatment of lung diseases, inhalation therapy is complex mainly due to the defense mechanisms of the lungs that lead to rapid drug elimination. To overcome these issues, pulmonary drug delivery using nanocarriers appears to be the best therapeutic strategy. In fact, these nanosystems are able to reduce both drug therapeutic dose and side effects improving patient compliance, avoid alveolar macrophage clearance, protect the drug from degradation processes, and provide a controlled and targeted drug release. Therefore, this review aims to analyze the scientific literature regarding the use of nanocarriers to treat the main lung diseases (cancer, asthma, infections). In particular, attention was devoted to liposomes, polymer- and lipid-based nanoparticles, being the topic of most published articles in the last decade.