Nanoparticles Mediated Targeted Drug Delivery System of Some Antineoplastic Agents for the Treatment of Breast Cancer

Abstract

The section outlines the concept, techniques and outcome of the entire dissertation work to gist the reader in short period of time. Cancer literally meaning tumour in medical usage has to be curbed soon. Among the various types of cancers the breast tumour is commonly diagnosed in women but can also occur in men. The treatment of breast cancer involves several therapies like surgery, radiation, hormonal, biological, targeted and chemotherapy. Generally the chemotherapy applied has adjuvant to all the other therapies make use of drug or combination of drugs called cytotoxic agents. These drugs act by killing the cells but they cannot differentiate the cancerous cells from the normal ones, thereby leading to adverse effects with minimized antitumour efficacy. For the past few decades the attempts are been made to enhance the antitumour efficacy of these cytotoxic agents by application of novel drug delivery systems like liposomes, quantum dots, carbon nanotubes and nanofibres, microspheres, nanocrystals and nanoparticles etc. Among these systems the polymeric nanoparticles are widely investigated for their several advantages like a) enhanced drug therapeutic efficacy, b) increased local concentration at site of action, c) improved solubility of poor water soluble drugs, d) modified pharmacokinetics, e) prolonged half-life of drug, f) diminished metabolism, g) controlled or sustained release etc. Overall, the dual ligand nanoparticulate drug delivery system HA-albumin and HA-gelatin nanoparticles of PTX or DTX significantly gets targeted to the tumour site with prolonged half-life and better solubility. The simultaneous blockage of CD44 receptors and SPARC protein by nanoparticles containing HA and albumin might have influenced the significant change in their concentration at tumour site. In case of formulations containing combination of HA and gelatin, the MMPs are the target molecules along with CD44. The gelatin focuses these MMPs. The formulations are expected to have better therapeutic efficacy in treatment of breast cancer.