title: Functional liposomes in the cancer-targeted drug delivery.
abstract: Cancer is considered as one of the most severe health problems and is currently the third most common cause of death in the world after heart and infectious diseases. Novel therapies are constantly being discovered, developed and trialed. Many of the current anticancer agents exhibit non-ideal pharmaceutical and pharmacological properties and are distributed non-specifically throughout the body. This results in death of the both normal healthy and malignant cells and substantially leads to accruing a variety of serious toxic side effects. Therefore, the efficient systemic therapy of cancer is almost impossible due to harmful side effects of anticancer agents to the healthy organs and tissues. Furthermore, several problems such as low bioavailability of the drugs, low drug concentrations at the site of action, lack of drug specificity and drug-resistance also cause many restrictions on clinical applications of these drugs in the tumor therapy. Different types of the liposomal formulations have been used in medicine due to their distinctive advantages associated with their structural flexibility in the encapsulation of various agents with different physicochemical properties. They can also mediate delivery of the cargo to the appropriate cell type and subcellular compartment, reducing the effective dosage and possible side effects which are related to high systemic concentrations. Therefore, these novel systems were found very promising and encouraging dosage forms for the treatment of different types of cancer by increasing efficiency and reducing the systemic toxicity due to the specific drug delivery and targeting.
authors.affiliation: Biotechnology Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
authors.forename: Dena
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tila
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran.
authors.forename: Saeed
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ghasemi
authors.affiliation: Drug Applied Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
authors.forename: Seyedeh Narjes
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Yazdani-Arazi
authors.affiliation: Drug Applied Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran Research Center for Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran s_ghanbarzadeh@hotmail.co.uk.
authors.forename: Saeed
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ghanbarzadeh
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D055910:Antibodies, Immobilized / Q000737:chemistry; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D003692:Delayed-Action Preparations / Q000737:chemistry*; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry; D008081:Liposomes / Q000737:chemistry*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D055910:Antibodies, Immobilized; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D003692:Delayed-Action Preparations; D008055:Lipids; D008081:Liposomes; D010455:Peptides; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols
keywords: Functional liposomes; cancer; drug specificity; drug targeting; tumor therapy