Recent advances in antioxidant nanomedicines

Oxidative stress is a common pathogenic factor for various human diseases. Therefore, mitigating or even eliminating oxidative stress by scavenging excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) at pathological sites is of great importance in disease treatments. Although several molecular antioxidants have been used in clinics for treating oxidative stress-related diseases, their efficacies are still less satisfactory. Due to the advances in chemistry and nanotechnology, various antioxidant nanomedicines with diversified morphologies, structures, and compositions have been developed to trigger antioxidation reactions in lesion regions, mitigating oxidative stress in cells and regulating the inflammatory microenvironments, finally resulting in disease treatment. In this review, recent progresses achieved in this field are summarized and discussed in a comprehensive manner, with an emphasis on the underlying chemical mechanisms by which antioxidant nanomedicines scavenge ROS in response to the specific microenvironments of pathological regions. It is highly expected that a better understanding on the unique chemistry of antioxidant nanomedicines will facilitate the generation of more feasible antioxidant strategies for the treatments of oxidative stress-associated diseases.