The management of osteoarthritis symptomatology through nanotechnology: a patent review

Abstract

Osteoarthritis is considered a degenerative joint disease that is characterised by inflammation, chronic pain, and functional limitation. The increasing development of nanotechnology in drug delivery systems has provided new ideas and methods for osteoarthritis therapy. This review aimed to evaluate patents that have developed innovations, therapeutic strategies, and alternatives using nanotechnology in osteoarthritis treatment. The results show patents deposited from 2015 to November 2021 in the online databases European Patent Office and World Intellectual Property Organisation. A total of 651 patents were identified for preliminary assessment and 16 were selected for full reading and discussion. The evaluated patents are focused on the intraarticular route, oral route, and topical route for osteoarthritis treatment. The intraarticular route presented a higher patent number, followed by the oral and topical routes, respectively. The development of new technologies allows us to envision a promising and positive future in osteoarthritis treatment.

Keywords:

• Nanotechnology
• Osteoarthritis
• pain
• patents
• symptomatology
• treatments

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Authors’ contributions

Mariana Mendonça Santos: proposal discussion, writing and data analysis.

Anamaria Mendonça Santos: proposal discussion, writing and data analysis.

José Adão Carvalho Nascimento Júnior: proposal discussion, writing and data analysis.

Tatianny de Araujo Andrade: discussion of the proposal, technical guidance, and correction of the manuscript.

Gomathi Rajkumar: discussion of the proposal, technical guidance, and correction of the manuscript.

Luiza Abrahão Frank: discussion of the proposal, technical guidance, and correction of the manuscript.

Mairim Russo Serafini: discussion of the proposal, technical guidance, and correction of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. The authors thank CAPES and FAPITEC/SE for their financial support. This research was carried out in the framework of the National Institute of Science and Technology in Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology: a transdisciplinary approach INCT-NANOFARMA, which is supported by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, Brazil) Grant #2014/50928-2, and by “Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico” (CNPq, Brazil) Grant #465687/2014-8.