Clinical Applications of Tumor-targeted Systems
Cancer therapies are currently limited to surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. All these methods risk damage to normal tissues or incomplete eradication of the cancer. The limits of conventional cancer therapies promoted the development and application o
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Clinical Applications of Tumor-targeted Systems Xinxin Zhang
Abstract Cancer therapies are currently limited to surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. All these methods risk damage to normal tissues or incomplete eradication of the cancer. The limits of conventional cancer therapies promoted the development and application of various nanotechnologies. Recent advances in nanotechnology have established the importance in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of tumors. Although nanotechnology has attracted much attention, the actual use of nanotechnology to clinical cancer treatment is just in its start-up. This chapter reviews the technologies being investigated clinically and their therapeutic efficacy and safety. In addition, we discuss the challenges that must be overcome to realize more effective nanotherapeutics for cancer patients. Keywords Tumor targeted · Nanoparticle · Drug delivery system · Tumor diagnosis and therapy · Clinical application
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Introduction
Despite the continuous improvement of cancer-fighting strategies, malignancies are one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The combination of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy is still the standard anticancer therapeutic strategy. However, traditional anticancer drugs display poor selectivity to targeting site, leading to systemic toxicity, drug-resistant cancer cells, and tumor recurrence. The central promise of targeted drug delivery technologies is improved efficacy by increasing the drug concentration at a desired site while simultaneously minimizing toxicity by reducing off-target accumulation. The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) established the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer to promote the development of cancer nanotechnology in 2004. Only several years later, nano-based targeting
X. Zhang (*) Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 R. Huang, Y. Wang (eds.), New Nanomaterials and Techniques for Tumor-targeted Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5159-8_13
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delivery systems showed breakthrough in the burgeoning field and applied in cancer treatment and tumor earlier diagnosis. Nanotechnology is a union of several fields of science, including not only medicine but also areas such as physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. It has the potential to overcome the disadvantages of conventional drug delivery by adjusting pharmacokinetics and delivery, resulting in diminishing side effects and therefore enhancing efficiency. Nowadays, nanotherapeutics with features of improving blood circulation and reducing toxicity have been authorized for cancer therapy, such as liposomes, albumin nanoparticles, and polymeric micelles. Many other nanotechnology-enable treatments have shown great promise in clinical development, including radiation therapy, gene or RNA interference therapy, and chemotherapy, which are expected to achieve definitive results in the near future [1]. Most therapeutic nanoparticle
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