Carbon Nanoarchitectures: Toxicity Barrier and Therapeutic Advancement

Advancement of therapeutic modalities using carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNMs) has mounted in the last few decades. The concept of therapeutic advancement consists of a possible application by understanding the toxicity issues and their fate in the living biological system. Carbon based nanomaterials are recently exploited for their unique properties, and their utilization toward biomedical application such as drug delivery system (DDS), tissue regeneration, nonviral immunotherapy, biosensing, bioimaging, etc. is well reported. Despite such a report, it is very much required to understand their toxicity assessment with fate within the human body. The present review assesses the toxic behavior of various carbonaceous materials and the therapeutic advancement in spite of their toxicity issues. Carbon nanostructures (carbon quantum dot, carbon nanotube, fullerene, graphene, carbon nanohorn, carbon nanodiamond, etc.) impart various cellular toxicities, which are based on their geometric structure as well as chemical composition and physicochemical parameters (size, morphology, surface passivation). Moreover, this review also includes an additional section describing various sources of carbon with their preparation and their properties. Regardless of the toxicity barrier, carbon based materials are still ameliorating the therapeutic advancement with respect to various biomedical applications, which are also highlighted in this review along with their use by suppressing their toxic behavior.