Hydrogel-Based Drug Delivery Nanosystems for the Treatment of Brain Tumors

Abstract

Abstract:Chemotherapy is commonly associated with limited effectiveness and unwanted side effects in normal cells and tissues, due to the lack of specificity of therapeutic agents to cancer cells when systemically administered. In brain tumors, the existence of both physiological barriers that protect tumor cells and complex resistance mechanisms to anticancer drugs are additional obstacles that hamper a successful course of chemotherapy, thus resulting in high treatment failure rates. Several potential surrogate therapies have been developed so far. In this context, hydrogel-based systems incorporating nanostructured drug delivery systems (DDS) and hydrogel nanoparticles, also denoted nanogels, have arisen as a more effective and safer strategy than conventional chemotherapeutic regimens. The former, as a local delivery approach, have the ability to confine the release of anticancer drugs near tumor cells over a long period of time, without compromising healthy cells and tissues. Yet, the latter may be systemically administered and provide both loading and targeting properties in their own framework, thus identifying and efficiently killing tumor cells. Overall, this review focuses on the application of hydrogel matrices containing nanostructured DDS and hydrogel nanoparticles as potential and promising strategies for the treatment and diagnosis of glioblastoma and other types of brain cancer. Some aspects pertaining to computational studies are finally addressed.

Nanodrug Delivery Systems for the Treatment of Ovarian Cancer

“…Numerous nanodrug delivery vehicles have been developed including nanoconjugates, branched dendrimers, liposomes, nanostructured lipid formulations and polymer nanomicelles (Table 1) [18,19]. These drug delivery systems have many advantages including the promotion of therapeutic drug delivery and fulfilling several (biopharmaceutical) parameters, such as a marked increase in therapeutic impact compared to the free drug, good biodegradability and biocompatibility, nontoxic and noninflammatory characteristics, as well as future prospects in scaling-up manufacturing [20].…”

Hydrogels Based Drug Delivery Synthesis, Characterization and Administration

“…Administration of hydrogels via intratumoral injection is a practical approach, which requires the release of the nanostructure system loaded in a hydrogel matrix. These hydrogel structures are so-called “macroscopic gels” that are coming with the imperative need to decrease potential damages of associated tissues during an injection [200]. Qinjie Wu et al, 2015 synthesized a smart hydrogel responsive to temperature, which prevented the formation of peritoneal adhesion on a damaged abdominal wall [181].…”

Exosomes as Therapeutic Vehicles for Cancer

“…The most common example of drug delivery systems (DDS) for oncotherapy include synthetic polymers, liposomes, micelles, super magnetic particles, protein and recombinant viral vectors have been developed [63][64][65][66][67] and some of them are currently in clinical testing [68]. A more recent addition includes smart or intelligent polymeric hydrogels that respond to external environmental changes and encapsulate or release its cargo [69]. While some of these innovative drug delivery systems have been exploited and may lead to clinical benefits in cancer patients, there are many potential barriers hinder their efficient drug delivery for their toxicity, bioavailability, stability, and target delivery.…”