Strategies in overcoming the challenges of cytotoxic agents using smart colloidal solid lipid nanoparticles and nanostructured lipid carriers - A review

Abstract

Cancer is one of the most leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide causing 9.6 million deaths in 2018. However, for a variety of cancers the efficacy of current standard treatments is suboptimal. For, most of the cytotoxics are highly toxic which restrains their use in cancer treatment. Second, almost all cancer treatments lack specificity, affecting both the cancerous cells and their normal counterparts. Finally, hydrophobicity and short half lives exhibited by a number of chemotherapeutic agents restrict their efficacy. However, application of nanotechnology has led to the development of effective nanosized drug delivery systems known commonly as nanoparticles. Amid the different lipid based oral delivery systems, Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) and Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) specifically, have shown to be quite effective in manifesting the potentiality to; a) enhance selectivity of cytotoxics b) reduce the cytotoxicity to normal tissues c) improving the solubility of hydrophobic cytotoxics and d) offer a sustained and controlled release of agents. The current review summarizes the strategies using SLN's and NLC's in overcoming the challenges and enhancement of anticancer efficacy of cytotoxic agents to specific tumor targeting, including active and passive targeting, long circulating and MDR reversing.