Introduction on Nanomedicines

**3**

therapy and not chemotherapeutic agents.

**Chapter 1**

*Mohamed Ahmed*

**1. Introduction**

Introductory Chapter: Overview

Nanomedicine is an emerging field that has caught the interest of many medical scientists and chemists due to its unique characteristics that open the door wide for several unique applications that might lead to solving many problems that were found difficult to tackle in medicine. Nanomedicine has opened a new category of medicines called nanomedicines where the medicine is reduced to the nanoscale size, hoping to enhance its physicochemical properties. The chapter summarizes the nanomedicines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the nanomedicines whose clinical trials based on previously published review articles by Anselmo and Mitragotri are ongoing [1, 2]. To gain insight to current trends in nanomedicine research and the most success-

ful types of nanomedicines in the market, the approved nanomedicines are presented in **Figure 1**. The number of approved nanomedicine products is 29 till 2019 [1]. Liposomes represented 44.8% (13 products). Inorganic nanoparticles ranked second with 41.4% (12 products). Other nanoparticles (polymeric and protein) have only 4 products (13.8%). These findings are very interesting as liposomes are one of the oldest nanomedicines. This opens an argument about the challenges in nanomedicine translation as a new platform requires further investigations to prove its activity and safety. On the other hand, cancer nanotherapeutics is ranked first with 10 products in the market, followed by iron-replacement therapies with 8 products. Also, it is worth to mention that imaging agents (six marketed products) are ranked in third place, especially the inorganic nanoparticles (three products). Moreover, nanomedicines, currently undergoing clinical trials, are presented in **Figure 2**. The number of products under clinical trials is 47 till 2019 [1], where liposomes represented 61.7% (29 products) and micelles ranked second with 19.15% (9 products). Other nanoparticles have only nine products (19.15%). Also, these findings are similar to approved nanomedicine, where liposomes are the most used nanomedicine. On the other hand, 39 products are dedicated for cancer treatment. It is worth to mention that 10 products out of the 39 products are loaded with gene

Generally, the total number of nanomedicines in the market or in clinical trial are 76 products, where liposome formulations were the most used delivery system with 55.26% (42 products), followed by inorganic nanoparticles with 21% (16 products) as presented in **Figure 3**. According to the World Health Organization in 2015, the first leading cause of death in around 50% of countries is cancer [3]. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer report that published in 2018 on the global burden of cancer, there are 18.1 million cancer cases and 9.6 million cancer deaths in 2018 [3]. These reports inspired the

on Nanomedicine Market

*Islam Ahmed Hamed Khalil, Islam A. Arida and* 
