The application of carbon nanotubes in target drug delivery systems for cancer therapies
Open Access
- 13 October 2011
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nanoscale Research Letters
- Vol. 6 (1), 555
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1556-276x-6-555
Abstract
Among all cancer treatment options, chemotherapy continues to play a major role in killing free cancer cells and removing undetectable tumor micro-focuses. Although chemotherapies are successful in some cases, systemic toxicity may develop at the same time due to lack of selectivity of the drugs for cancer tissues and cells, which often leads to the failure of chemotherapies. Obviously, the therapeutic effects will be revolutionarily improved if human can deliver the anticancer drugs with high selectivity to cancer cells or cancer tissues. This selective delivery of the drugs has been called target treatment. To realize target treatment, the first step of the strategies is to build up effective target drug delivery systems. Generally speaking, such a system is often made up of the carriers and drugs, of which the carriers play the roles of target delivery. An ideal carrier for target drug delivery systems should have three pre-requisites for their functions: (1) they themselves have target effects; (2) they have sufficiently strong adsorptive effects for anticancer drugs to ensure they can transport the drugs to the effect-relevant sites; and (3) they can release the drugs from them in the effect-relevant sites, and only in this way can the treatment effects develop. The transporting capabilities of carbon nanotubes combined with appropriate surface modifications and their unique physicochemical properties show great promise to meet the three pre-requisites. Here, we review the progress in the study on the application of carbon nanotubes as target carriers in drug delivery systems for cancer therapies.Keywords
This publication has 97 references indexed in Scilit:
- Length-Dependent Retention of Carbon Nanotubes in the Pleural Space of Mice Initiates Sustained Inflammation and Progressive Fibrosis on the Parietal PleuraThe American Journal of Pathology, 2011
- Biodurability of single-walled carbon nanotubes depends on surface functionalizationCarbon, 2010
- Supramolecular Stacking of Doxorubicin on Carbon Nanotubes for In Vivo Cancer TherapyAngewandte Chemie, 2009
- In vivo therapeutic silencing of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF-1α) using single-walled carbon nanotubes noncovalently coated with siRNANano Research, 2009
- Carbon nanotubes in biology and medicine: In vitro and in vivo detection, imaging and drug deliveryNano Research, 2009
- PEG Branched Polymer for Functionalization of Nanomaterials with Ultralong Blood CirculationJournal of the American Chemical Society, 2009
- Targeted Killing of Cancer Cells in Vivo and in Vitro with EGF-Directed Carbon Nanotube-Based Drug DeliveryACS Nano, 2009
- Targeted Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube-Mediated Pt(IV) Prodrug Delivery Using Folate as a Homing DeviceJournal of the American Chemical Society, 2008
- Thermal ablation of tumor cells with antibody-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Soluble Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes as Longboat Delivery Systems for Platinum(IV) Anticancer Drug DesignJournal of the American Chemical Society, 2007