Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes in Drug Design and Discovery

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been proposed and actively explored as multipurpose innovative carriers for drug delivery and diagnostic applications. Their versatile physicochemical features enable the covalent and noncovalent introduction of several pharmaceutically relevant entities and allow for rational design of novel candidate nanoscale constructs for drug development. CNTs can be functionalized with different functional groups to carry simultaneously several moieties for targeting, imaging, and therapy. Among the most interesting examples of such multimodal CNT constructs described in this Account is one carrying a fluorescein probe together with the antifungal drug amphotericin B or fluorescein and the…