Tumour and dendrimers: a review on drug delivery aspects

Abstract

Tumour is a morbid state, characterized by spontaneous outgrowth of an abnormal mass of cells. The evolution of tumours is random, disorganized, a condition of numerous mutations. The properties are biased and incompletely comprehended. It is a malignant or benign condition that encompasses its own rules of morphogenesis, an immortal state that elucidates different physiology. It is a pathological crisis that still haunts the minds of scientists, physicians and patients, a complete cure of which is still a dream to be realized. The unpredictable microenvironment of cancerous cells in all of its existing forms i.e. leukaemic cells, solid tumours and sarcomas is well documented. This phenomenon expressed by cancerous sites in the body poses various obstacles towards drug efficacy. Thus, it has become necessary to address briefly the issues relating to tumour physiology, its vasculature and angiogenesis. The information could provide insight towards the development of tumour-targeted drug delivery. The salient features regarding these have been discussed.

Nanomaterials: Applications in Cancer Imaging and Therapy

“…The therapeutic index of such “dendritic drugs” can be significantly higher than the drug alone. For active targeting, folate has been the most applied vector for the accumulation of dendrimer–anticancer‐drug conjugates in tumor tissue 168, 188. Dendrimers functionalized with a variety of tumor targeting peptides, such as RGD and neurotensin, are also gaining in importance due to metabolic stabilization of the peptides as well as enhanced affinity to cancer cells 189–191…”

Skin Cancer and Its Treatment: Novel Treatment Approaches with Emphasis on Nanotechnology

“…Useful diagnostic modalities are MRI with T1 and/or T2 sensitive agents, fluorescein markers, and radionuclides [56,57]. [107][108][109][110] Quantum dots [137][138][139][140][141][142] Nanotubes [128][129][130][131][132][133] Nanomaterials Polymeric mycelia and nanospheres [115][116][117][118] Solid lipid nanoparticles [113,114] Gold nanoparticles [143][144][145][146][147] Mesoporous nanoparticles based on silica [134][135][136] Dendrimers [121][122][123][124][125] Therapy [177][178][179][180][181][182][183] Magnetic activation [98][99][100][101]…”

Structure and interaction of flexible dendrimers in concentrated solution

“…Using the scattering intensities of single dendrimers I 12)], one can calculate the coherent contribution to the scattering intensity I coh (q) for various particle number densities according to Eq. (9). To this end we have solved the Ornstein-Zernike equations together with the hypernetted chain closure U (cm)…”