Tathagata Dutta and Ramam Bala Srinivasa Panchangam
Engineered Nanoparticles for the Delivery of Anticancer Therapeutics
Therapeutic agents in cancer treatment are aimed at rapidly dividing cells, limiting their multiplication, and promoting apoptosis. Lack of selectivity of these conventional methods resulted in needless damage to normal cells leading to severe adverse effects. Nanotechnology in medicine gratify the constraint in conventional treatment by delivering conventional drugs to the targeted tissue or organ and plays an important role in targeting the delivery, thereby avoiding systemic toxicity and increasing the bioavailability and therapeutic index of the drug. The advantage of using nanoparticles as drug carriers is in their binding competence and reversing multidrug resistance. Using active and passive targeting strategies, nanoparticles enhance intracellular drug concentrations. The present review focuses the on the basic pathophysiology of cancer and the various types of nanoparticulate drug delivery systems that have been explored so far, taking advantage of the tumour vasculature and other molecular mechanisms which differentiates cancer cells from normal ones, for the delivery of anticancer therapeutics for effective management of cancer. The article also aims to focus on the various surface engineered nanoparticles for targeted delivery of cancer.
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