Abstract

CARRIERS FOR CANCER DRUG THERAPY

Ashwini Mahakal*

Abstract

Conventional chemotherapy drugs show lack of specificity, inducing reduced activity on the cancer treatment. They exhibit high toxicity and after a prolonged period of administration the cancer cells develop resistance (multiple\drugresistance,MDR).This situation leads to increasing the side effects of drugs and affect the quality of the patients life.In order to overcom ethe above mentioned problems, the recent research community is focused primarily on developing drug delivery systems which respond in different stimulus, in the range of nanometer. The scope of nanotechnology to develop target specific carriers to achieve higher therapeutic efficacy is gaining importance in the pharmaceutical and other industries. Specifically, the emergence of nanohybrid materials is posed to edge over chemotherapy and radiation therapy as cancer therapeutics. This is primarily because nanohybrid materials engage controlled production parameters in the making of engineered particles with specific size, shape, and other essential properties. It is widely expressed that these materials will significantly contribute to the next generation of medical care technology and pharmaceuticals in areas of disease diagnosis, disease prevention and many other treatment procedures. This review focuses on the currently used nanohybrid materials, polymeric nanoparticles and nanotubes, which show great potential as effective drug delivery systems for cancer therapy, as they can be grafted with cell-specific receptors and intracellular targeting molecules for the targeted delivery of therapeutics. Specifically, this article focuses on the current status, recent advancements, potentials and limitations of polymeric nanohybrids and functionalized carbon nanotubes as drug delivery carriers.

Keywords: nanohybrid materials, polymeric nanoparticles and nanotubes.