Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 23, Issue 35, 2017

Background: Micellization provides numerous merits for the delivery of water insoluble anti-cancer therapeutic agents including a nanosized ‘core–shell’ drug delivery system. Recently, hydrophobically-modified polysaccharides and proteins are attracting much attention as micelle forming polymers to entrap poorly soluble anti-cancer drugs. Method: By virtue of their small size, the self-assembled micelles can passively targ Read More

Micelles are nanoparticles formed by the self-assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers in certain solvents above concentrations called critical micelle concentration (CMC). Micelles are used in different fields like food, cosmetics, medicine, etc. These nanosized delivery systems are under spotlight in the recent years with new achievements in terms of their in vivo stability, ability to protect entrapped drug, release kinetics, Read More

Polymer micellar nanogels are a group of core-shell polymeric micelles with swelling properties in aqueous media. Nanogel systems have proven their potential in controlled, sustained and targetable drug delivery area with no immunological responses. This review includes a comprehensive wide range of self-assembly of polymeric nanogels as delivery systems for anticancer drugs. Nanogels are nanoparticulate drug delivery Read More

Protein nanocarriers possess unique merits including minimal cytotoxicity, numerous renewable sources, and high drug-binding capability. In opposition to delivery carriers utilizing hydrophilic animal proteins, hydrophobic plant proteins (e.g, zein) have great tendency in fabricating controlled-release particulate carriers without additional chemical modification to stiffen them, which in turn evades the use of toxic che Read More

Albumin polymeric Nanoparticles (NPs) have opened a great expectancy as for controlled drug delivery due to their therapeutic potency. Concomitantly biodegradable NPs technologies with target linked structures to pave the way of personalised medicine are becoming increasingly important in sight of a therapeutically effective research technology. This is particularly attractive for nanoparticle-based cancer delivery Read More

Significant research efforts have been concerned over the past few years to design carrier systems that could specifically deliver active agents to the tumor sites, with the purposes of maximizing the therapeutic benefits and minimizing the toxic side-effects. Hyaluronic acid is a type of polysaccharide that has been extensively studied as a selective targeting ligand to cancerous cells that overexpress its specific receptor Read More

Cellulose is an important environmentally-friendly renewable polymer on the earth. Cellulose has been widely used as feedstocks for the synthesis of biomaterials, biofuels and biochemicals. Recently, cellulose and cellulose derivatives have received intense attention in biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering, scaffold, artificial blood vessel, skin grafts, artificial skin, drug carrier, and chronic skin diseases, many of whi Read More

Melanoma shows a high possibility of mortality after it metastasizes because of its aggressive nature. Although there are several options for anti-melanoma therapy, this skin malignancy is resistant to some therapies. Chemotherapy, biochemotherapy, immunotherapy, and adoptive cell therapy have failed to exhibit a significant amelioration in overall survival. Nanomedicine provides an opportunity to improve the efficien Read More

Background: Delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer is becoming advanced day by day. However, the challenge of the effective delivery system still does exist. In various types of cancers, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women. Breast cancer is a combination of different diseases. It cannot be considered as only one entity because there are many Read More

In the last decades, gene therapy has become a novel therapeutic strategy for cancer treatment, including immunologic and molecular approaches. Among molecular avenue, the design of efficient and effective gene delivery systems, like cationic liposomes and niosomes, has been widely investigated and proposed as the most promising research area. The advantages of cationic vesicles rely on their natural ability t Read More

Non-specific distribution of chemotherapeutic agents in the body where they affect both cancer as well as normal cells resulting in serious side effects is the major reason for the high mortality rate of cancer. Thus, there is a need for developing targeted delivery strategies specially employing nanoplatform-based cancer therapies that provide specific targeting to tumor cells. In this regard, biopolymeric nanoplatfor Read More

Targeting drugs or pharmaceutical compounds to tumor site increases cancer treatment efficiency and therapeutic outcome. Nanoparticles are unique delivery systems for site-targeting within an organism. Many novel technologies have been established in drug research and development area. Nanotechnology now offers nanometer size polymeric nanoparticles and these particles direct drugs to their targets, protect drugs Read More

Background: The ‘tumor microenvironment’ comprised of tumor cells, non-malignant stromal tissues, signaling molecules and the extracellular matrix. Tumor microenvironment has unique physical and physiological characteristics including vascular abnormalities, hypoxia, acidic pH, specific enzymes and growth factors upregulation and high reducing potential. It is these endogenous properties of the tumor environment that Read More

Over the last years, magnetic nanoparticles have received a great attention in cancer therapy and diagnosis. Magnetic drug targeting, is a particularly promising application in this area as the nanoparticles can be directed to the tumor by external magnetic field and concentrated the drug in this tumor tissue. In addition to this magnetic targeting, their inherent magnetic properties provide sensitive contrast enhancem Read More

Ultrasound contrast agents (UCA) represented by gas-filled microbubble, can provide simultaneous and co-localized enhancement on image contrast to help disease diagnosis by highlighting tissue borders. Nowadays, Some UCAs (e.g. Levovist®, Optison®, Definity®, and Sonovue®) are commercially available, and have been clinically utilized for enhanced ultrasonography in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and so on. Howe Read More

Cancer is becoming a leading cause of death in the last years. Although we have seen great advances, most human cancers remain incurable because many patients either do not respond or relapse to treatment. Several lines of research are disclosing new therapeutic targets which lead to new active drugs. However, there are still unsolved problems related to stabilization of the pharmaceutical ingredient in aqueous and Read More