Current Drug Delivery Send Orders for Reprints to reprints@benthamscience.ae Current Drug Delivery, 2019, 16, 195-214 195 REVIEW ARTICLE Graphene Family of Nanomaterials: Reviewing Advanced Applications in Drug delivery and Medicine 1567-2018/19 $58.00+.00 © 2019 Bentham Science Publishers Kumud Joshi 1,2,* , Bhaskar Mazumder 2 , Pronobesh Chattopadhyay 1 , Nilutpal Sharma Bora 1,2 , Danswrang Goyary 1 and Sanjeev Karmakar 1 Defence Research Laboratory, Tezpur, India; 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam, India A R T I C L E H I S T O R Y Received: July 18, 2018 Revised: October 16, 2018 Accepted: October 24, 2018 DOI: 10.2174/1567201815666181031162208 Abstract: Graphene in nano form has proven to be one of the most remarkable materials. It has a single atom thick molecular structure and it possesses exceptional physical strength, electrical and electronic properties. Applications of the Graphene Family of Nanomaterials (GFNs) in different fields of therapy have emerged, including for targeted drug delivery in cancer, gene delivery, antimicrobial therapy, tis- sue engineering and more recently in more diseases including HIV. This review seeks to analyze current advances of potential applications of graphene and its family of nano-materials for drug delivery and other major biomedical purposes. Moreover, safety and toxicity are the major roadblocks preventing the use of GFNs in therapeutics. This review intends to analyze the safety and biocompatibility of GFNs along with the discussion on the latest techniques developed for toxicity reduction and biocompatibility enhancement of GFNs. This review seeks to evaluate how GFNs in future will serve as biocompatible and useful biomaterials in therapeutics. Keywords: Graphene, graphene nanoplatelets, graphene nanoribbons, drug delivery, antimicrobial therapy, tissue engineering, graphene biocompatibility. 1. INTRODUCTION Carbon is a versatile molecule and forms the backbone of a large number of compounds owing to its ability to form covalent bonds and long chains of interlinked carbon atoms which are highly stable and strong. For long, carbon was believed to exist in only two pure forms that are diamond and graphite [1]. However, in recent decades, exciting discoveries have exponentially expanded the purview of car- bon chemistry. These discoveries were the nanoforms of carbon including graphene, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. Graphene family of nanomaterials is an important class of carbon nanomaterials. Graphene was first isolated in 2004. Andres guim and Konstantin novoselov were awarded nobel prize for their groundbreaking work on graphene in 2010 [2, 3]. Since then graphene has been researched extensively, and many successes have been reported. Graphene consists of a single layer of sp 2 -hybridized carbon atoms that are π - conjugated and arranged in hexagonal ring form. Different single layers, come together to form a honeycomb two- dimensional (2D) sheet structure, with excellent electronic, optical, thermal and mechanical properties along with an ultra-high surface area (2630 m 2 /g) [4, 5]. These novel prop- erties make graphene an ideal candidate suitable for applica- tions in various fields including biomedicine and drug deliv- ery [6-8]. Apart from pristine graphene, there are many other members of graphene-family, including Graphene Oxide *Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Pharmaceuti- cal Sciences, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam, India; Tel: +917895155262; E-mail: kumudjoshi123@gmail.com (GO), Reduced Graphene Oxide (rGO), Graphene Quantum Dots (GQDs), Graphene Nanoribbons (GNRs), Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNPs) and Warped Nanographene (WNG) (Fig. 1). These are modified structural forms of graphene molecules. The structural modifications of graphene also bring about modification in physiochemical properties, such as hydrophilicity, fluorescence properties and modifications of binding sites. These modifications provide us characteris- tics needed suitable for therapeutic delivery and medical purpose. The potential therapeutic uses of GFNs include drug delivery applications like targeted cellular level drug delivery [8, 9], stimuli-responsive drug delivery in diseases like cancer [9-16], and delivery of small biomolecules like DNA, RNA, genes [17, 18], and proteins [19]. GFNs hold promising potential for antimicrobial therapy as well [20]. The excellent strength and electrical conductivity make them suitable biomaterial for development of scaffolds in tissue engineering [21]. We reviewed the potential applications of GFNs in the field of therapy. We further tried to explore challenges to their biomedical applications and recent im- provements and advances to overcome these challenges. Graphene can be obtained from carbon precursors. The Most commonly reported method for the synthesis of gra- phene oxide from graphite is Hummers' Method [22]. The preparation methods use one of the two approaches: top-down and bottom-up approaches. The top-down approach uses vari- ous methods for peeling off single graphene sheets from graphite. This approach either use a micromechanical process which applies mechanical methods to separate graphene from graphite (e.g., scotch tape method) or use chemical or thermal