Carbon Nanotubes in Drug delivery: Just a Carrier?

Iijima's 1991 discovery brought to the attention of the research community a new allotrope of carbon: carbon nanotubes (CNTs).Since then CNTs have been extensively studied and have demonstrated to be of great potential in various industrial and biomedical fields of application [1].CNTs can be described as rolled-up sheets of graphene forming single or multi walled seamless cylinders; their diameters range from few to hundreds of nanometres, respectively.They generally present a length/diameter ratio higher than 10 6 and have exceptional electrical, thermal, mechanical and optical properties [2,3].Notwithstanding their great potential, the observed toxicity of these novel materials caused major concerns.CNTs are highly hydrophobic in nature