Cancer therapeutics- opportunities, challenges and advances in drug delivery.

ABSTRACT

This review highlights the characteristics of the cancer that provide opportunities for drug delivery carriers to target cancer. These opportunities include EPR effect, high interstitial pressure of tumour, low pH of endosomes of tumor cells, overexpressed receptors, angiogenesis etc. Chemotherapy is one of the most important treatments currently available among the various approaches. The present status of chemotherapy is far from being satisfactory. Its efficacy is limited and patients have to suffer from serious side effects, some of which are life-threatening. The newer approaches to cancer treatment not only supplement the conventional chemotherapy but also aim to prevent damage to the normal tissues and overcome drug resistance. The innovative approaches of cancer treatment require new concepts of drug delivery in cancer. This concept requires the unique surface morphology which ultimately determines the fate of new drug delivery systems. The Innovative methods must also shoot out the associated problems of cancer like multidrug resistance by tumor cells. Progress in developing various controlled and targeted drug delivery systems has reviewed here with an emphasis on dendrimeric drug delivery system. Dendrimeric system appears to be promising in cancer chemotherapy especially via ligand/receptor mediated endocytosis as it posses numerous properties (especially surface property) to target cancer.