Atherosclerosis is the leading inducement of cardiovascular diseases, which ranks the
first cause of global deaths. It is an arterial disease associated with dyslipidemia and changes in the
composition of the vascular wall. Besides invasive surgical strategy, the current conservative clinical
treatment for atherosclerosis falls into two categories, lipid regulating-based therapy and antiinflammatory
therapy. However, the existing strategies based on conventional drug delivery systems
have shown limited efficacy against disease development and plenty of side effects. Nanomedicine
has great potential in the development of targeted therapy, controlled drug delivery and release, the
design of novel specific drugs and diagnostic modalities, and biocompatible scaffolds with multifunctional
characteristics, which has led to an evolution in the diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis.
This paper will focus on the latest nanomedicine strategies for atherosclerosis diagnosis and
treatment as well as discussing the potential therapeutic targets during atherosclerosis progress,
which could form the basis of development of novel nanoplatform against atherosclerosis.