ZnO Nanostructures for Tissue Regeneration, Drug-Delivery and Theranostics Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Zinc oxide nanostructures are capturing a great deal of interest thanks to their outstanding and multifunctional properties, coupled with the existence of a huge amount of nano-morphologies (such as nanowires, nanorods, nanoparticles, and nanoflowers), as well as their easy preparation. These aspects fostered a deep investigation of ZnO nanomaterials and related properties, to design and fabricate smart biocompatible nanotools, which have been successfully applied to a wide plethora of applications, ranging from energy harvesting systems and photocatalysis, to the biomedical field. In such particular case, ZnO nanostructures alone or combined into hybrid or composite systems represented a powerful tool for the fabrication of new scaffolds for tissue regeneration with improved antimicrobial properties, as well as for drug-delivery applications. Moreover, the promising optical and biocompatible properties of ZnO have been successfully combined together, resulting into the co-presence of imaging and therapeutic actions. This aims at designing novel nanosystems for theranostic applications in particular for cancer therapy. 

This Special Issue of Nanomaterials is dedicated to the most recent advances in the use of ZnO nanostructures for designing novel “smart” biomedical systems applied to tissue engineering, drug-delivery and theranostics. Participation with research papers and reviews, focused on these topics and ranging from the synthesis and characterization of the raw materials, up to their final in-vitro and in-vivo applications, is highly encouraged.

Prof. Dr. Valentina Cauda
Dr. Marco Laurenti
Guest Editors

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