Pharmaceutical Nanocarriers (Liposomes and Micelles) in Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Fundamental progress in cancer biology has resulted in remarkable advances in diagnosis and cancer therapy. The need now is to transform this knowledge into effective therapies. The effectiveness of chemotherapeutic drugs is severely limited due to the dose-limiting toxicity and patient morbidity. In cancer therapy, effective delivery of the drug to the tumor site while avoiding off-site side effects is the primary challenge. This challenge can be overcome by targeting the tumor site selectively to avoid the undesired side-effects at non-target sites after the systemic delivery. A good drug delivery system fulfills several pharmaceutical requirements including increase in therapeutic effect, good biocompatibility, an ability to accumulate at a targeted site and controlled release of the drug at the target site [1]. Nanocarriers assisted delivery of drugs has become a successful strategy that enhances the delivery of small molecule and large molecules such a genes and peptides or proteins [2]. Different nanocarriers such as nanospheres, nanocapsules, liposomes, micelles, dendrimers, quantum dots, solid lipid nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles, virus and virus-like nanoparticles have been explored for the delivery of small molecules and large molecules therapeutics.