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A significant cause of worldwide morbidity and mortality that carries a heavy health care burden is cardiovascular disease. The mortality rate of cardiovascular disease, which is considered the leading cause of death in the United States, is close to 801,000 people every year. Coronary heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, myocardial infarction (MI), and pulmonary embolism are some of the many examples of cardiovascular diseases. They all lead to ischemia and tissue death. Among them, important conditions that cause mortality are MI and heart failure. Technological innovations and novel therapies are necessary to counter these diseases given the bleak outcomes. Advances in research tools and treatments can be achieved through the synergy of biology and nanotechnology. Nanoparticles (NPs) for drug delivery and therapeutic stem cells (SCs) are specific examples of nanobiotechnology in action. Aside from drug delivery, nanotechnology can be utilized for other therapeutic purposes in treating cardiovascular diseases. SC therapy, which has the capacity to improve repair of cardiac tissue, is an example.

There is an increasing body of evidence demonstrating the importance of paracrine factors in a wide range of diseases. Paracrine factors such as growth factors and cytokines are soluble signaling proteins synthesized and secreted by cells and can diffuse over short distances to induce changes in neighboring cells. They act locally and show short and slow diffusion in the extracellular matrix to interact with their receptors to activate signaling pathways that control a variety of cellular processes such as proliferation, survival, migration, and differentiation. This chapter provides the latest advances in the development of different nanoparticulate systems for the delivery of paracrine factors to increase availability, preserve bioactivity, functionality and stability, and control release of paracrine factors to the region of interest.

Nanotechnology has garnered tremendous interest from the scientific community and captured the vivid imagination of the general public for many years. It is a broad field of study that spans various scientific disciplines with myriad useful applications. In medicine, nanotechnology is being developed for a multitude of purposes to improve the diagnosis, management, and treatment of diseases. This chapter provides a brief historical timeline of nanotechnology and nanomedicine, describes the current state of nanomedicine, and lays the basic groundwork for further discussions about nanotechnology in cardiology.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), including heart failure, myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease, and inflammatory heart disease, offer as one of the biggest health challenges around the world. Unfortunately, because of a growth in the risk factors of CVD, such as obesity and diabetes, it is expected that in next 10 years there will be raise in CVDs. Despite promising improvements in therapeutic modalities and pharmacological progressions, the discovery of innovative and more effective therapies is still essentially needed. Nanomedicine has become one of the interesting areas of research that is expected to fill this gap through the development of CVD care system.

When the heart can no longer meet the body’s demands by providing sufficient blood pressure and/or flow, heart failure arises. The body responds to this failure, such as releasing neurohormones that stimulate the organs, retaining salt and water by the kidneys, and changing cellular and organ structure and function by activating intracellular signaling pathways in the vasculature and heart. At first, lower cardiac performance can be counteracted by these “compensatory” responses. However, these responses eventually contribute to disease progression by raising the probability of organ failure and exacerbating clinical prognosis. Heart failure may present with many variations in clinical presentation, but some symptoms are common, such as fatigue, fluid retention, and shortness of breath. Systolic heart failure (dilated heart and contractile failure) occurs in approximately 50% of all people. Diastolic heart failure (heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF)) comprises the other 50% and usually presents with a hypertrophied, nondilated heart which contracts normally. There is a rise in the worldwide prevalence of HFpEF, but the condition has not been well-investigated.

A considerable increase in research using nanotechnology for biomedical applications including diagnostics, drug delivery systems, imaging agents, implant coatings, and other therapeutic techniques has occurred since the beginning of this century. The ability of nanoparticles (NPs) to mediate biological effects due to their distinctive physico-chemical properties makes them attractive in medicine and nanomedicine (e.g., increase in implant performance by nano-textured surfaces, improvement in NP delivery of therapeutics into tumors by the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, enhancement of MRI contrast by superparamagnetic NPs). In addition, commercialization of technology is another unique benefit of NPs (e.g., rediscovery of drugs that may have been clinically unsuccessful in the past, give greater intellectual property protection, allow novel drug indications).