Bone Targeting Nanoparticles for the Treatment of Osteoporosis

Abstract

Osteoporosis (OP) affects millions of people worldwide, especially postmenopausal women and the elderly. Although current available anti-OP agents can show promise in slowing down bone resorption, most are not specifically delivered to the hard tissue, causing significant toxicity. A bone-targeted nanodrug delivery system can reduce side effects and precisely deliver drug candidates to the bone. This review focuses on the progress of bone-targeted nanoparticles in OP therapy. We enumerate the existing OP medications, types of bone-targeted nanoparticles and categorize pairs of the most common bone-targeting functional groups. Finally, we summarize the potential use of bone-targeted nanoparticles in OP treatment. Ongoing research into the development of targeted ligands and nanocarriers will continue to expand the possibilities of OP-targeted therapies into clinical application.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• bone targeting
• nanomedicine
• osteoporosis therapy

Disclosure

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

This project was partly supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82102607); Taishan Young Scholar Foundation of Shandong Province (NO. tsqnz20231256); Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2023QH148); PhD Research Foundation of Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University (2022-BS-03, 2022-BS-04), Engineering Research Center of Shandong Higher Education Institutions ([2022] No. 2), the NSFC cultivation project of Jining Medical University (JYP2019KJ33).