Peptide Targeted Lipid Nanoparticles for Anticancer Drug Delivery

Abstract

Encapsulating anticancer drugs in nanoparticles has proven to be an effective mechanism to alter the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles of the drugs, leading to clinically useful cancer therapeutics like Doxil and DaunoXome. Underdeveloped tumor vasculature and lymphatics allow these first-generation nanoparticles to passively accumulate within the tumor, but work to create the next-generation nanoparticles that actively participate in the tumor targeting process is underway. Lipid nanoparticles functionalized with targeting peptides are among the most often studied. The goal of this article is to review the recently published literature of targeted nanoparticles to highlight successful designs that improved in vivo tumor therapy, and to discuss the current challenges of designing these nanoparticles for effective in vivo performance.

Ultrasmall Conjugated Polymer Nanoparticles with High Specificity for Targeted Cancer Cell Imaging

“…With the rapid advances of nanotechnology, versatile NP systems including semiconducting quantum dots (QDs), gold NPs, and dye encapsulated NPs, etc., have been developed 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Despite the fact that NPs with varied sizes have been designed for different biomedical applications,17, 18, 19 there has been limited success in highly selective cancer targeting, and only a few examples for inorganic gold NPs were reported 16, 20. This is attributed to the precise size control of inorganic NPs to be smaller than 10 nm, as NPs with sizes ranging from 20 to 200 nm are able to be nonspecific internalized into cells which significantly compromises the detection selectivity 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.…”

Tumor vascular-targeted co-delivery of anti-angiogenesis and chemotherapeutic agents by mesoporous silica nanoparticle-based drug delivery system for synergetic therapy of tumor

“…So how to substantially enhance the efficacy while diminish the side effects of chemotherapy has been the focus in cancer therapy. [1][2][3] Tumor angiogenesis plays an important role in tumor development, and therefore is also an important sector considered in the treatment of tumors. [4][5][6][7] Different from normal tissues, the vasculatures of tumors show specific overexpressions of cytokines, and therefore can be used as targets for tumor treatment, 8,9 and tumor vasculatures, which are the transport channel of nutrition for the fast proliferating tumor cells, are appropriate therapeutic targets.…”

Immobilized transferrin Fe3O4@SiO2 nanoparticle with high doxorubicin loading for dual-targeted tumor drug delivery

“…15 Coupling particular ligands of therapeutic agents with nanoparticle carriers can enhance their antitumor activity, due to the strong bond between receptor-expressing tumor cells and the ligands, as well as the intracellular delivery potential of cell-mediated endocytosis. [16][17] Various ligands have been linked to nanoparticles for enhancing drug delivery efficiency. [18][19][20] Human serum transferrin is a single-chain glycoprotein, present in plasma, that can transport iron in the human body.…”