Reconstituted HDL: Drug Delivery Platform for Overcoming Biological Barriers to Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Drug delivery to malignant tumors is limited by several factors, including off-target toxicities and suboptimal benefits to cancer patient. Major research efforts have been directed toward developing novel technologies involving nanoparticles (NPs) to overcome these challenges. Major obstacles, however, including, opsonization, transport across cancer cell membranes, multidrug-resistant proteins, and endosomal sequestration of the therapeutic agent continue to limit the efficiency of cancer chemotherapy. Lipoprotein-based drug delivery technology, “nature’s drug delivery system,” while exhibits highly desirable characteristics, it still needs substantial investment from private/government stakeholders to promote its eventual advance to the bedside. Consequently, this review focuses specifically on the synthetic (reconstituted) high-density lipoprotein rHDL NPs, evaluating their potential to overcome specific biological barriers and the challenges of translation toward clinical utilization and commercialization. This highly robust drug transport system provides site-specific, tumor-selective delivery of anti-cancer agents while reducing harmful off-target effects. Utilizing rHDL NPs for anti-cancer therapeutics and tumor imaging revolutionizes the future strategy for the management of a broad range of cancers and other diseases.

High-Density Lipoprotein: From Biological Functions to Clinical Perspectives

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Recent Advances in the Design of Self‐Delivery Amphiphilic Drugs and Vaccines

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[18F]DCP, First Generation PET Radiotracer for Diagnosis of Radiation Resistant Head and Neck Cancer

“…The observed accumulation of [ 18 F]DCP in organs such as the kidney and liver is expected given the metabolism and function of these organs. Selective tumor targeting can be achieved as a future goal with other means including the use of aptamers (51), liposomes (52), and others (53). EGF-liposomes could be particularly useful considering the 80-90% frequency of EGFR overexpression in HNSCC (54).…”