Current Drug Metabolism - Volume 15, Issue 6, 2014

Nanomaterials have made a significant impact on cancer therapeutics and an emergence of polymeric nanoparticle provides a unique platform for delivery of drug molecules of diverse nature. Nanoparticles can be targeted at the tumor cells due to enhanced permeability and retention effect. Moreover, nanoparticles can be grafted by various ligands on their surface to target the specific receptors overexpressed by cancer cell Read More

Drug bioavailability may vary greatly amongst individuals, affecting both efficacy and toxicity: in humans, genetic variations account for a relevant proportion of such variability. In the last decade the use of pharmacogenetics in clinical practice, as a tool to individualize treatment, has shown a different degree of diffusion in various clinical fields. In the field of infectious diseases, several studies identified a great number of assoc Read More

The cytochrome P450 family of enzymes play an important role in the metabolism of drugs and other xenobiotics. While genotypic variation can contribute to the inter-individual variability in drug metabolism, individuals sharing the same genotype for an enzyme can still show considerable variability in drug metabolising capacity by that enzyme. It is well recognised that in some disease states (e.g. inflammation, infection, di Read More

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have demonstrated increasingly wide applications in drug delivery due to their unique physicochemical and optical properties as well as low toxicity. Compared to the organic nanocarriers for therapeutic agents, AuNPs have shown superior performance as drug delivery vectors, including the inert nature, well-developed synthesis strategies, tunable size, and flexible and easy surface modification Read More

Cancer is still considered to be one of the most severe diseases so far. Multidrug resistance (MDR) is a major obstacle against curative cancer chemotherapy. The over-expression of drug efflux pumps in cellular membrane plays a critical role in preventing cancer cells from conventional chemotherapy. Nanotechnology is emerging as a class of therapeutics for MDR. This review mainly focuses on some pivotal strategies to Read More