Renal Cell-Targeted Drug Delivery Strategy for Acute Kidney Injury and Chronic Kidney Disease: A Mini-Review

Abstract

Kidney diseases, including acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), have become a global public health concern associated with high morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. However, at present, very few effective and specific drug therapies are available, owing to the poor therapeutic efficacy and systemic side effects. Kidney-targeted drug delivery, as a potential strategy for solving these problems, has received great attention in the fields of AKI and CKD in recent years. Here, we review the literature on renal targeted, more specifically, renal cell-targeted formulations of AKI and CKD that offered biodistribution data. First, we provide a broad overview of the unique structural characteristics and injured cells of acute and chronic injured kidneys. We then separately summarize literature examples of renal targeted formulations according to the difference of target cells and elaborate on the appropriate formulation design criteria for AKI and CKD. Finally, we propose a hypothetic strategy to improve the renal accumulation of glomerular cell-targeted formulation by escaping the uptake of the reticuloendothelial system and provide some perspectives for future studies.

Antioxidative 0-dimensional nanodrugs overcome obstacles in AKI antioxidant therapy

“…30,31 Nanodrugs must pass through the glomerular endothelium, glomerular basement membrane and podocytes for renal filtration in order to accurately reach the AKI injury point to exert a curative effect. 32,33 The glomerulus is a cluster of tiny blood vessels through which plasma is filtered into the kidney vesicles. 34 The structure between the capillaries and the renal vesicles is called the filtration membrane and consists of three layers.…”

Nanosystems for oxidative stress regulation in the anti-inflammatory therapy of acute kidney injury

“…In addition to their own specific enrichment effect, nanosystems can also achieve the active targeting drug delivery by surface modification, and thereby enhance the therapeutic effect of various antioxidant damage drugs on AKI ( Yang et al, 2018a ; Liu et al, 2021 ).…”

Delivery System for Targeted Drug Therapy in Chronic Diseases

“…Glomerular cells, endothelium cells, podocytes, macrophages, and tubular epithelial cells (TECs) are all involved in the course of CKD, with glomerular cells being particularly affected. 13 Gary et al recently demon-strated that nanoparticles modified with carboxymethyl-terminated poly (20∼200 nm), can deliver drugs to the kidney for treatment of glomerular kidney disease more efficiently, enabling a greater concentration of drug to accumulate in diseased glomeruli. 14 Bruni et al used four-arm star-shaped polymers as raw materials to obtain new drug-loaded ultra-small colloidal nanocarriers with a tunable size of 5-30 nm.…”