Application of nanomedicine for efficient delivery of herbal bioactives

Nanomedicine can be referred to as the application of nanotechnology to health. It exploits the improved and often novel physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials at the nanometric scale. Nanocarriers are emerging as a revolutionary tool to address diseases by increasing the capability of biomedical compounds, reducing the repeated administration, the possible toxicities phenomena, and improving the bioavailability, which leads to the improvement of the therapeutic value. By nanotechnology, herbal bioactive drawbacks such as low intestinal absorption, very high hydrophobicity, and instability in a biological environment, among others, are overpassing. Thus, phytotherapy, a science-based medical practice, is newly positioned as the most amazing fount for new pharmaceutical approaches, recovering its ancestral role in solving medical issues wherein herbal extracts have been the primary source of natural compounds used in medicine for centuries, with potential therapeutic activities such as hypoglycemic, antidiabetic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, anticarcinogenic, antimalarial, antimycobacterium, and others. Therefore, nanocarriers for efficient delivery of herbal bioactives point toward a feasible route to improve herbals' delivery rates, ultimately leading to the top. This chapter will give a roadmap of nanocarriers for herbal drug delivery with potential applications in cancer, post-COVID-19 sequelae, and other illnesses.