scholarly journals Utilisation of Targeted Nanoparticle Photosensitiser Drug Delivery Systems for the Enhancement of Photodynamic Therapy

Molecules ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherie Kruger ◽  
Heidi Abrahamse

The cancer incidence world-wide has caused an increase in the demand for effective forms of treatment. One unconventional form of treatment for cancer is photodynamic therapy (PDT). PDT has 3 fundamental factors, namely a photosensitiser (PS) drug, light and oxygen. When a PS drug is administered to a patient, it can either passively or actively accumulate within a tumour site and once exposed to a specific wavelength of light, it is excited to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), resulting in tumour destruction. However, the efficacy of ROS generation for tumour damage is highly dependent on the uptake of the PS in tumour cells. Thus, PS selective/targeted uptake and delivery in tumour cells is a crucial factor in PDT cancer drug absorption studies. Generally, within non-targeted drug delivery mechanisms, only minor amounts of PS are able to passively accumulate in tumour sites (due to the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect) and the remainder distributes into healthy tissues, causing unwanted side effects and poor treatment prognosis. Thus, to improve the efficacy of PDT cancer treatment, research is currently focused on the development of specific receptor-based PS-nanocarrier platform drugs, which promote the active uptake and absorption of PS drugs in tumour sites only, avoiding unwanted side effects, as well as treatment enhancement. Therefore, the aim of this review paper is to focus on current actively targeted or passively delivered PS nanoparticle drug delivery systems, that have been previously investigated for the PDT treatment of cancer and so to deduce their overall efficacy and recent advancements.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sureshbabu Ram Kumar Pandian ◽  
Theivendren Panneerselvam ◽  
Parasuraman Pavadai ◽  
Saravanan Govindaraj ◽  
Vigneshwaran Ravishankar ◽  
...  

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) afflict more than one billion peoples in the world’s poorest countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded seventeen NTDs in its portfolio, mainly caused by bacterial, protozoal, parasitic, and viral infections. Each of the NTDs has its unique challenges on human health such as interventions for control, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Research for the development of new drug molecules against NTDs has not been undertaken by pharmaceutical industries due to high investment and low-returns, which results in limited chemotherapeutics in the market. In addition, conventional chemotherapies for the treatment of NTDs are unsatisfactory due to its low efficacy, increased drug resistance, short half-life, potential or harmful fatal toxic side effects, and drug incompetence to reach the site of parasite infection. In this context, active chemotherapies are considered to be re-formulated by overcoming these toxic side effects via a tissue-specific targeted drug delivery system. This review mainly emphasizes the recent developments of nanomaterial-based drug delivery systems for the effective treatment of NTDs especially sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, chagas disease, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, african trypanosomiasis and dengue. Nanomaterials based drug delivery systems offer enhanced and effective alternative therapy through the re-formulation approach of conventional drugs into site-specific targeted delivery of drugs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Sohail ◽  
Wenna Guo ◽  
Zhiyong Li ◽  
Hui Xu ◽  
Feng Zhao ◽  
...  

: In recent years, due to the shortcomings of conventional chemotherapy, such as poor bioavailability, low treatment index and unclear side effects, the focus of cancer research has shifted to new nanocarriers of chemotherapeutic drugs. By using biodegradable materials, nanocarriers generally have the advantages of good biocompatibility, low side effects, targeting, controlled release profile, and improved efficacy. And more to the point, nanocarrier based anti-cancer drug delivery systems clearly show the potential to overcome the problems associated with conventional chemotherapy. In order to promote the deepening of research and development in this field, we herein summarized and analyzed various nanocarrier based drug delivery systems for cancer therapy, including the concepts, types, characteristics and preparation methods. The active and passive targeting mechanisms of cancer therapy were also included, along with a brief introduction of the research progress of nanocarriers used for anti-cancer drug delivery in the past decade.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (14) ◽  
pp. 2502-2513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Iqbal Hassan Khan ◽  
Xingye An ◽  
Lei Dai ◽  
Hailong Li ◽  
Avik Khan ◽  
...  

The development of innovative drug delivery systems, versatile to different drug characteristics with better effectiveness and safety, has always been in high demand. Chitosan, an aminopolysaccharide, derived from natural chitin biomass, has received much attention as one of the emerging pharmaceutical excipients and drug delivery entities. Chitosan and its derivatives can be used for direct compression tablets, as disintegrant for controlled release or for improving dissolution. Chitosan has been reported for use in drug delivery system to produce drugs with enhanced muco-adhesiveness, permeation, absorption and bioavailability. Due to filmogenic and ionic properties of chitosan and its derivative(s), drug release mechanism using microsphere technology in hydrogel formulation is particularly relevant to pharmaceutical product development. This review highlights the suitability and future of chitosan in drug delivery with special attention to drug loading and release from chitosan based hydrogels. Extensive studies on the favorable non-toxicity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, solubility and molecular weight variation have made this polymer an attractive candidate for developing novel drug delivery systems including various advanced therapeutic applications such as gene delivery, DNA based drugs, organ specific drug carrier, cancer drug carrier, etc.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 1084-1098
Author(s):  
Fengqian Chen ◽  
Yunzhen Shi ◽  
Jinming Zhang ◽  
Qi Liu

This review summarizes the epigenetic mechanisms of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) methylation, histone modifications in cancer and the epigenetic modifications in cancer therapy. Due to their undesired side effects, the use of epigenetic drugs as chemo-drugs in cancer therapies is limited. The drug delivery system opens a door for minimizing these side effects and achieving greater therapeutic benefits. The limitations of current epigenetic therapies in clinical cancer treatment and the advantages of using drug delivery systems for epigenetic agents are also discussed. Combining drug delivery systems with epigenetic therapy is a promising approach to reaching a high therapeutic index and minimizing the side effects.


Author(s):  
Peng Xie ◽  
Yushu Wang ◽  
Dengshuai Wei ◽  
Lingpu Zhang ◽  
Bin Zhang ◽  
...  

The mechanisms of chemoresistance and nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems for platinum drugs were detailed summarized in this review. The current combination therapy provided an effective strategy to overcome the platinum drug resistance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Zielińska ◽  
Piotr Eder ◽  
Lucas Rannier ◽  
Juliana C. Cardoso ◽  
Patrícia Severino ◽  
...  

Abstract: Hydrogels for the modified-release drug delivery systems is a continuously growing area of interest for the pharmaceutical industry. According to the global market, the use of polymers in this area is projected to reach $31.4 million by 2027. This review discusses the recent advances and perspectives of hydrogel in drug delivery systems for oral, parenteral, nasal, topical, and ophthalmic. The search strategy did in January 2021, and it conducted an extensive database to identify studies published from January 2010 to December 2020.We described the main characteristic of the polymers to obtain an ideal hydrogel for a specific route of administration and the formulations that was a highlight in the literature. It concluded that the hydrogels are a set useful to decrease the number of doses, side effects, promote adhesion of patient and enhances the bioavailability of the drugs improving the safety and efficacy of the treatment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yubin Huang ◽  
Hongtong Lu ◽  
Shasha He ◽  
Qingfei Zhang ◽  
Xiaoyuan Li ◽  
...  

The clinical application of conventional chemotherapeutic agents, represented by cisplatin, is limited by severe side effects. So, it is essential to explore more safer and controlled drug delivery systems for...


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (17) ◽  
pp. 3772-3788 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Huang ◽  
Feng Qiu ◽  
Rongjun Chen ◽  
Deyue Yan ◽  
Xinyuan Zhu

In this Review, recent advances in fluorescence resonance energy transfer-based drug delivery systems for enhanced photodynamic therapy are described, and the current challenges and perspectives in this emerging field are also discussed.


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