Targeted Nanotherapeutics for Respiratory Diseases: Cancer, Fibrosis, and Coronavirus

Abstract

Systemic delivery of therapeutics for treatment of lung diseases has several limitations including poor organ distribution of delivered payload with relatively low accumulation of active substances in the lungs and severe adverse side effects. In contrast, nanocarrier based therapeutics provide a broad range of opportunities due to their ability to encapsulate substances with different aqueous solubility, transport distinct types of cargo, target therapeutics specifically to the deceased organ, cell, or cellular organelle limiting adverse side effects and increasing the efficacy of therapy. Moreover, many nanotherapeutics can be delivered by inhalation locally to the lungs avoiding systemic circulation. In addition, nanoscale based delivery systems can be multifunctional, simultaneously carrying out several tasks including diagnostics, treatment and suppression of cellular resistance to the treatment. Nanoscale delivery systems improve the clinical efficacy of conventional therapeutics allowing new approaches for the treatment of respiratory diseases which are difficult to treat or possess intrinsic or acquired resistance to treatment. The present review summarizes recent advances in the development of nanocarrier based therapeutics for local and targeted delivery of drugs, nucleic acids and imaging agents for diagnostics and treatment of various diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and coronavirus.

Modification Tadalafil and Macitentan tablets to aerosol

“…The viscosity of the mucus does not let the drug to be released to the airway surface [1]. Patients with COPD and cystic fibrosis have thick mucus and the clearance mechanisms do not work properly [24,25]. There are different transporters in different sites of the airways.…”

Multifunctional Lipid-Based Nanoparticles for Codelivery of Anticancer Drugs and siRNA for Treatment of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with Different Level of Resistance and EGFR Mutations

“…As expected, synthesized NLCs possessed high loading capacity for anticancer drugs and conjugation efficacy for siRNA. The former on average varied from 90 to 98% while the latter was close to 85–90%, making the proposed cancer-targeted NLCs comparable and even more advanced when compared with other lipid-based and other types of nanocarriers [ 35 , 36 , 39 ]. It should also be stressed that the proposed NLC formulations demonstrated a very low degradation and deprivation of drugs, especially PTX, during short- and long-term storage in aqueous solution with different ranges of pH, temperature, and freezing–thawing conditions.…”

“…Therefore, research efforts have been focused in the past decade on developing nanotherapeutics with improved therapeutic efficacy [ 34 , 35 , 36 ]. Over the years, a wide range of nanoscale drug delivery systems were exploited for treating various respiratory diseases including lung cancer [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ]. Several nanosized delivery systems have also been developed for increasing the efficacy of EGFR TK inhibitors and overcome the development of resistance in lung cancer [ 23 , 24 , 44 , 45 ].…”

Nanotechnology-Based RNA Vaccines: Fundamentals, Advantages and Challenges

“…It is also proposed to replace polyethylene glycol with other biopolymers such as N -(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (HPMA) copolymer and use ligands specific to dendritic cells (e. g, mannose or hydrophobic-interaction-inducing lipids) conjugated to the surface of nanoparticles [ 98 , 131 ]. It is well known that directing of nanoparticles specifically to their place of action significantly increases the accumulation of the delivered agent in targeted organs, tissues and cells, improves their pharmacogenetics and prevents unwanted adverse side effects [ 10 , 56 , 57 , 75 , 132 ]. One of the significant issues of lipid nanoparticle-loaded mRNA vaccines is off-targeting to the liver even though the LNP-mRNA vaccine is injected via intramuscular injection [ 133 , 134 ].…”