Therapeutic applications

Abstract

Nanomaterials both with immobilized enzymes or with enzyme-like activities (nanozymes) offer several advantages over natural biocatalysts such as protection from harsh environmental conditions, production at large scale, low costs, great robustness against extreme conditions and superior activities. As a consequence of their advantages, these nanosystems have been widely applied in biosensing, degradation of organic pollutants and therapy. In this chapter, broad field of nanomaterial-immobilized enzymes and nanozymes based on metal nanoparticles and nanocarbons are introduced from the point of view of therapeutics applications. The most recent progresses in the field of nanozymes with multifunctional applications and the current state of knowledge of single-atom catalysts are particularly discussed. Finally, new nanodevices for therapeutic applications are described in the context of enzyme-powered nanomotors. Because of the developments and innovations in nanomaterials science, nanozymes and single-atom catalysts have gained increasing interest compared with their ancestors and indeed will continue to be an active field in nano-therapy strategies in the incoming years.