RECENT MODALITIES IN DRUG DELIVERY VIA INHALATION THERAPY – AN ADVANCED TREATMENT STRATEGY FOR PULMONARY CARCINOMA

Abstract

The potential benefit of nanoparticles (NPs) as a colloidal delivery system for pharmaceutical relevance has earned substantial concern in the past decades. Fatality rate due to cancer sustained to hike; advances in nanotechnology have quite become a trenchant approach for enhancing effective drug targeting to cancer tissues by circumventing all the imperfections of traditional chemotherapy. Inhalation drug delivery directly targeting the lungs through respiratory tract is a rapidly maturing field of research and most recently explored approaches for both local and systemic therapy. With the recent advances in synthesis and manipulation of nanoparticles, inhalation drug delivery has shown great impact on pulmonary practice. Inhalation drug delivery has diverse actions over traditional chemotherapy including a) non-invasive b) avoiding first pass metabolism and systemic toxicity c) minimized frequent dosing and d) target delivery of drug to the lung epithelium thereby enhancing local drug concentrations. Dry powder inhalers, meter dose inhalers and nebulizers are some few efficient methods to deliver therapeutic agents directly targeting to the lungs. The ultimatum of inhalation therapy is to generate particles with an ample range of particle sizes. With the recent interest in the development of pulmonary targeted therapy, this review presents how the inhalation drug delivery overcomes conventional chemotherapy and focuses the recent treatment modalities that have been established for pulmonary carcinoma by the route of inhalation as well as discusses the advantages of inhalation drug delivery.