Therapeutic nanosystems for oncology nanomedicine

Abstract

Cancer is a complex disease which includes many pathologies featuring abnormal growth of healthy cells, invasion and metastization. Cellular uncontrolled growth increases the amount of abnormal cells, these cells reach the blood stream and other healthy tissues giving rise to secondary tumors. Even though great progresses have been made in understanding cancer aetiology and in the development of new anticancer drugs, cancer still remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Most common cancers include breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and brain cancer. Conventional chemotherapeutics have proven to be inefficient in cancer treatment due to lack of specificity and poor drug accumulation in tumors. In addition, they cause severe side effects. Available treatments must be prolonged on time to achieve some therapeutic effect; however, this often leads to the development of multidrug resistance by tumor cells. Nanotechnology platforms are, therefore, being exploited as potential alternatives. Nanosystems have been reported to target and deliver the drug in situ to selectively kill cancer cells, decreasing toxicity on healthy organs and tissues as well as side effects. Furthermore, some nanosystems have been reported to overcome tumor resistance, at least to some extent. Over the years several nanosystems have been proposed to diagnose and treat cancers, such as dendrimers, polymeric micelles, superparamagnetic iron oxide cores, gold nanoparticles, liposomes and other lipid nanoparticles. Due to their small size and biocompatibility, they can reach the target site without being detected by the immune system and suffer cellular uptake or deliver the drug in the tumor vicinity.

Cancer Cell Growth Inhibitory Effect of Bee Venom via Increase of Death Receptor 3 Expression and Inactivation of NF-kappa B in NSCLC Cells

“…Lung cancer is very difficult to discover in the initial stage because it often does not cause any symptoms until it has spread to others organs [2,3]. Although several anticancer agents have been used to treat lung cancer, chemo-resistance is a major obstacle hindering the successful treatment of lung cancer patients [4].…”

Kinetics of silica nanoparticles in the human placenta

“…Diverse sets of nanoparticles (NPs) are under investigation for both diagnostic and therapeutic medical applications, such as medical imaging, cancer therapy, and drug delivery (Sandhiya et al 2009). Nanomedicine includes diagnostic applications of NPs such as MRI contrast enhancement, biosensors and in vivo imaging, as well as advantages for drug delivery agents due to increased bioavailability and potentially targeted drug delivery (Sandhiya et al 2009; Gonçalves et al 2012). …”

Diagnostic and Therapeutic Uses of Nanomaterials in the Brain

“…Drug delivery systems (DDS) have the potential to overcome limitations of drugs such as poor solubility, lack of selectivity, toxic side effects and development of multidrug resistance [111]. They have been widely studied for the delivery of actives to many regions of the body, including the brain [112].…”