Oral Nanomaterial Formulations for Gastrointestinal Therapeutics and Disease Treatment

Published in the KeAi journal Nano Biomedicine and Engineering, a new review by researchers from Jinan University describes how oral nanomaterial formulations serve as promising carriers for gastrointestinal (GI) disease treatment.

"Oral delivery is the most patient-friendly route for GI therapy, but conventional drugs often struggle with low solubility, acid degradation, poor absorption and insufficient targeting," says co-corresponding author Tianfeng Chen. "Nanomaterials effectively address these drawbacks by shielding drugs from harsh GI conditions, boosting permeability and enabling site-specific intestinal delivery."

Nanomaterials are divided into metallic and non-metallic categories. Metallic nanomaterials, including TiO₂, Ag, Au, Cu and Zn nanostructures, show high stability and strong antimicrobial activity, but face biosafety concerns such as ion release, intestinal barrier damage, gut microbiota dysregulation and long-term accumulation.

In contrast, non-metallic nanomaterials—including silica, polymer nanoparticles, carbon nanomaterials, liposomes and selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs)—present better biocompatibility, tunable biodegradability and milder interactions with the GI microenvironment.

"Selenium nanoparticles are particularly attractive for their intrinsic antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and gut-protective effects, as well as their scalability for industrial production,” adds Chen.

Despite great progress, however, challenges remain in large-scale and reproducible synthesis, long-term biosafety, residual impurity control, batch-to-batch consistency and compliance with clinical GMP standards.

"From safety and biocompatibility to scalability and clinical feasibility, non-metallic nanomaterials, especially SeNPs, polymers and liposomes, offer a more practical route for future oral gastrointestinal therapeutics," says co-corresponding author Hongwei Huang.

According to the authors, future work would focus on rational structural design, stimulus-responsive controlled release, standardized biosafety evaluation, real-time GI tracking and intelligent manufacturing to speed up clinical translation.

Contact author details:

Tianfeng Chen, Hongwei Huang College of Pharmacy, Institute of Nanotechnology And Intelligence (inAI), State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Molecules and Druggability Assessment, Jinan University; Department of Pharmacy and General Surgery, Puning People's Hospital(Guangdong Postdoctoral Innovation Practice Base, Jinan University),  Guangzhou, Guangdong, China , sincos90@163.com

Funder: 

This work was supported by Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2023A1515012387), National Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (82225022), National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171296), and National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC3402800).

Conflict of interest:

The author Tianfeng Chen is Associate Editor for Nano Biomedicine and Engineering and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

See the article:

Zehang Zhang, Haoqiang Lai, Ting Liu, Wenfang Yu, Yu Yang, Tianfeng Chen, Hongwei Huang. Oral nanomaterial formulations for gastrointestinal therapeutics: Promises and challenges on the path to clinical translation. "Nano Biomedicine and Engineering", 2026, Volume 18, Issue 2, 100041. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbe.2025.100041