Carbon Nanomaterials in Drug and Gene Delivery Potential: Focus on Fungal Infections

Fungi are eukaryotic microorganisms, unicellular or multicellular, and several species are responsible for dormant/mild/life-threatening clinical implications in humans, animals and plants. The current chapter identifies the global burden of fungal infections and prospects for the utility of carbon nanomaterials in improving treatment regimes for the most prevalent fungal infections in humans. Major hurdles in clinically addressing fungal infections are drug resistance, metabolic and gene level homology of the fungi with humans leading to off-target effects, and lastly poor pharmacokinetics of the known anti-fungals. Carbon nanomaterials have emerged as promising candidates for drug and gene delivery due to their unique physicochemical properties, including high surface area, tunable surface chemistry, and biocompatibility. We have described in detail the recent literature wherein carbon nanomaterials–carbon nanotubes, carbon nanodots, graphene and graphene oxide, and fullerene are elaborated in terms of their properties suitable for drug and gene delivery, functionalization and efficacy in addressing fungal infections. The applications of carbon nanomaterials in addressing fungal infections via improved drug pharmacokinetics, controlled/sustained release of drug and improved efficacy due to synergistic effect with anti-fungal drugs has been elaborated. Lastly we have discussed the challenges of using carbon nanomaterials in anti-fungal regimes in terms of optimization required for drug loading and release kinetics, safety considerations and potential toxicity, and regulatory hurdles for translating carbon nanomaterial based interventions.