3. Fate of nanoparticles in the body

3.1 Toxicity and nanoparticles

Nanoparticles hold great promise for both imaging and therapy. However, despite several decades of flourishing preclinical research, only a handful of products are currently on the market. Many factors can be put forward to explain this state of affairs. The first is the difficulty of reliably assessing the toxicity and fate of nanoparticles. The problem of nanomaterial toxicity is more complex than that of molecular compounds. New tools and protocols have therefore been developed. Nanoparticles must be considered as compounds at the boundary between molecular and solid species. Nano-objects can be described, for example, in terms of distribution, structure and/or composition, whereas molecular compounds can be fully described as a single object. Nano-objects...