Lipid-Based Nano-Sized Cargos as a Promising Strategy in Bone Complications: A Review

Abstract

Bone metastasis has been considered the fatal phase of cancers, which remains incurable and to be a challenge due to the non-availability of the ideal treatment strategy. Unlike bone cancer, bone metastasis involves the spreading of the tumor cells to the bones from different origins. Bone metastasis generally originates from breast and prostate cancers. The possibility of bone metastasis is highly attributable to its physiological milieu susceptible to tumor growth. The treatment of bone-related diseases has multiple complications, including bone breakage, reduced quality of life, spinal cord or nerve compression, and pain. However, anticancer active agents have failed to maintain desired therapeutic concentrations at the target site; hence, uptake of the drug takes place at a non-target site responsible for the toxicity at the cellular level. Interestingly, lipid-based drug delivery systems have become the center of interest for researchers, thanks to their biocompatible and bio-mimetic nature. These systems possess a great potential to improve precise bone targeting without affecting healthy tissues. The lipid nano-sized systems are not only limited to delivering active agents but also genes/peptide sequences/siRNA, bisphosphonates, etc. Additionally, lipid coating of inorganic nanomaterials such as calcium phosphate is an effective approach against uncontrollable rapid precipitation resulting in reduced colloidal stability and dispersity. This review summarizes the numerous aspects, including development, design, possible applications, challenges, and future perspective of lipid nano-transporters, namely liposomes, exosomes, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC), and lipid nanoparticulate gels to treat bone metastasis and induce bone regeneration. Additionally, the economic suitability of these systems has been discussed and different alternatives have been discussed. All in all, through this review we will try to understand how far nanomedicine is from clinical and industrial applications in bone metastasis.

Nanoparticular and other carriers to deliver lactoferrin for antimicrobial, antibiofilm and bone-regenerating effects: a review

“…The cost of mass-producing liposomes is another barrier to their widespread use. Innovative techniques such as supercritical carbon dioxide need to be explored further (Hallan et al 2022 ) and the effect of these processes on the structure of the drug molecule needs to be studied.…”

“…Microfluidization may achieve scalability with low batch-to-batch differences, however, this high energy process may damage proteins (Al‐amin et al 2020 ). Supercritical carbon dioxide technique is a recently developed technique used to prepare liposomes and niosomes (Hallan et al 2022 ). It is an inexpensive, inert, harmless, fire-resistant and environmentally friendly approach that avoids the use of organic solvent.…”

“…The method involves atomized water droplets used to coat phospholipid vesicles under high diffusion of carbon dioxide. Several studies have demonstrated encapsulation efficiencies above 66% for various drugs using this method (Hallan et al 2022 ).…”

“…SLNs can protect the drug from degradation (from light or oxygen) (Patel and San Martin-Gonzalez 2012 ; Pignatello et al 2018 ; Thorn et al 2021 ). Storage stability can be further increased by lyophilization and spray-drying (Hallan et al 2022 ). Interestingly, SLNs can be designed to have prolonged circulation in the blood and may be able to accumulate in the bone marrow.…”

“…The P188-SLNs also adsorbed apolipoprotein C-II and C-III in sufficient amounts that the researchers postulated that P188-SLNs could accumulate in the bone marrow, similar to poloxamer 407 polystyrene particles (Göppert and Müller 2003 ). Compared to liposomes and polymeric nanocarriers, SLNs are also easier and cheaper to mass-produce (Naseri et al 2015 ; Sayed 2017 ; Hallan et al 2022 ) and sterilize (Pignatello et al 2018 ).…”